The curious case of how bird wrists evolved

4 months ago 4

NEWS AND VIEWS
09 July 2025

Wrist evolution helped birds to conquer the air. Fossil data and analysis of a modern bird’s development reveal that this evolution preceded bird origins

Xing Xu
1. Xing Xu is at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China, and at Yunnan University, Kunming, China.

Have you ever thought about whether birds have wrist bones, or considered the complexity of their wrists while watching them move their wings during flight or fold them at rest? The avian wrist is structurally and functionally complex. Equally complex is its evolutionary history, leading to debates in the efforts to trace avian evolution. One seemingly insignificant wrist bone, often called the cuneiform in living birds, is a key part of this controversy. Writing in Nature, Napoli et al.¹ report their discoveries pertaining to this wrist bone and present innovative interpretations about evolution of the joint.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02055-2

References

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