A Tiny Dinosaur Swallowed Too Many Stones, Died — and Left Behind a 120-Million-Year Mystery

A Tiny Dinosaur Swallowed Too Many Stones, Died — and Left Behind a 120-Million-Year Mystery

Learn how a unique combination of anatomical traits and CT-scan data led researchers to classify Chromeornis as a new dinosaur species — and reconstruct the behavior behind its unusual death.

This fossil bird choked to death on rocks, and no one knows why

A fossil only tells part of the story. When an animal’s body is preserved as a fossil, there are often pieces missing, and even a perfectly-preserved body doesn’t tell the whole story of how that animal behaved, how it lived, and how it ultimately died. But the cause of death for one unlucky bird that lived about 120 million years ago is clearer: the cluster of rocks in its throat tells scientists that it probably choked to death. The reason why…