The developing bird pelvis passes through ancestral dinosaurian conditions

Christopher T. Griffin, João F. Botelho, Michael Hanson, Matteo Fabbri, Daniel Smith-Paredes, Ryan M. Carney, Mark A. Norell, Shiro Egawa, Stephen M. Gatesy, Timothy B. Rowe, Ruth M. Elsey, Sterling J. Nesbitt and Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar ()
Additional contact information
Christopher T. Griffin: Yale University
João F. Botelho: Yale University
Michael Hanson: Yale University
Matteo Fabbri: Yale University
Daniel Smith-Paredes: Yale University
Ryan M. Carney: University of South Florida
Mark A. Norell: American Museum of Natural History
Shiro Egawa: RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research
Stephen M. Gatesy: Brown University
Timothy B. Rowe: The University of Texas at Austin
Ruth M. Elsey: Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
Sterling J. Nesbitt: Virginia Tech
Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar: Yale University

Nature, 2022, vol. 608, issue 7922, 346-352

Abstract: Abstract Living birds (Aves) have bodies substantially modified from the ancestral reptilian condition. The avian pelvis in particular experienced major changes during the transition from early archosaurs to living birds1,2. This stepwise transformation is well documented by an excellent fossil record2–4; however, the ontogenetic alterations that underly it are less well understood. We used embryological imaging techniques to examine the morphogenesis of avian pelvic tissues in three dimensions, allowing direct comparison with the fossil record. Many ancestral dinosaurian features2 (for example, a forward-facing pubis, short ilium and pubic ‘boot’) are transiently present in the early morphogenesis of birds and arrive at their typical ‘avian’ form after transitioning through a prenatal developmental sequence that mirrors the phylogenetic sequence of character acquisition. We demonstrate quantitatively that avian pelvic ontogeny parallels the non-avian dinosaur-to-bird transition and provide evidence for phenotypic covariance within the pelvis that is conserved across Archosauria. The presence of ancestral states in avian embryos may stem from this conserved covariant relationship. In sum, our data provide evidence that the avian pelvis, whose early development has been little studied5–7, evolved through terminal addition—a mechanism8–10 whereby new apomorphic states are added to the end of a developmental sequence, resulting in expression8,11 of ancestral character states earlier in that sequence. The phenotypic integration we detected suggests a previously unrecognized mechanism for terminal addition and hints that retention of ancestral states in development is common during evolutionary transitions.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04982-w

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