{"id":732470,"date":"2022-08-16T16:20:01","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T20:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=732470"},"modified":"2022-08-16T16:20:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T20:20:01","slug":"the-early-bird-gets-the-fruit-fossil-provides-earliest-evidence-of-fruit-eating-by-any-animal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=732470","title":{"rendered":"The early bird gets the fruit: Fossil provides earliest evidence of fruit-eating by any animal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of animals eat fruit, from toucans to fruit bats to maned wolves to humans. But most fruit-bearing plants evolved relatively recently in Earth&#8217;s history, showing up for the first time in the Cretaceous, the final period of the dinosaurs. In a new paper in eLife, scientists have tracked down the first fossil evidence of fruit consumption by comparing the skull shapes and stomach contents of fossil birds. The verdict: the earliest-known fruit-eater was an early bird called Jeholornis that lived 120 million years ago, and it may have helped contribute to the spread of the plants that dominate the world today.&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n Click here for original story, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2022-08-early-bird-fruit-fossil-earliest.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The early bird gets the fruit: Fossil provides earliest evidence of fruit-eating by any animal<\/a>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\nSource: Phys.org&#013;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of animals eat fruit, from toucans to fruit bats to maned wolves to humans. But most fruit-bearing plants evolved relatively recently in Earth&#8217;s history, showing up for the first&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phys-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=732470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=732470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=732470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=732470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}