the war between us and our ghosts

And then Joanna Newsom said, “I believe love will always surround you, brave as a bear with a heart rare and true.”

Published today in Communications Biology, Imai et al. have unveiled a new basal bird from central Japan they have named Fukuipteryx prima or ‘Fukui’s primitive wing’. This little Early Cretaceous bird is only the size of a pigeon, roughly, but it has some features that really set it apart from the other basal birds that we have found so far: it is an fairly entire skeleton preserved three-dimensionally, and it has a pygostyle!

(Adapted from Fig 1 in Imai et al. 2019)

me, instantly:

Anisodactyly

The most common bird-feet formation, with three toes forward and one toe back.  You see this with most perching birds, wading birds, swimming birds, and raptors.

Zygodactyly

A bird-feet formation occurring primarily in parrots.  The middle two toes are forward, and the outer two toes are pointed back.  Birds with these feet tend to spend a lot of time clambering oh-so-gracefully around trees instead of just perching.

Syndactyly

Three toes pointing forward, one back, but the outer and middle forward-pointing toes are fused, because kingfishers.

Heterodactyly

Like the zygodactyly found in parrots, but instead of having the outer toes pointing back, there are two toes pointing back and then two pointing forward.  This only happens in a group known by the weirdly-metal and made-up sounding name of “trogons,” which is basically quetzals, which are weirdly-metal and made-up looking birds.

Pamprodactyly

All four toes pointing forward, because fuck everything.  Found in swifts, because they’re not from this planet.

Okay, it’s not because they’re aliens, it’s because they do this.