Complex tongue bones, fleshy teeth on the roof of earliest known bird's mouth https://phys.org/news/2026-02-complex-tongue-bones-fleshy-teeth.html Paper by Jingmai K. O’Connor et al.: https://www.cell.com/the-innovation/fulltext/S2666-6758(25)00289-9

"For a long time, there have been very few things we could say really characterize the transition from terrestrial #dinosaurs to flying bird dinosaurs... These weird little features in the mouth of #Archaeopteryx, that are also found in living #birds, are giving us new criteria"

Complex tongue bones, fleshy teeth on the roof of earliest known bird's mouth https://phys.org/news/2026-02-complex-tongue-bones-fleshy-teeth.html Paper by Jingmai K. O’Connor et al.: https://www.cell.com/the-innovation/fulltext/S2666-6758(25)00289-9

"For a long time, there have been very few things we could say really characterize the transition from terrestrial #dinosaurs to flying bird dinosaurs... These weird little features in the mouth of #Archaeopteryx, that are also found in living #birds, are giving us new criteria"