The Mother of all Birds?

A pigeon-sized waterfowl, represented by 110-million-year-old fossils from China, is the oldest "modern-looking" bird known to science and is considered a major step toward understandign the avian family tree. Matthew Lamanna of the Carnegie Natural History Museum said of Gansus yumenensis, "Every bird living today, from ostriches ... to bald eagles, probably evolved from a Gansus-like ancestor."