An ancestor to modern day perching birds like sparrows, finches, robins and crows was flying 52 million years ago, a new study has found. Today, passerines make up around 6,500 of the 10,000 bird species alive today but they were once extremely rare, according to experts. Scroll down for videoThe 52-year-old fossil of Eofringillirostrum Boudreauxi, the earliest known perching bird with a beak for eating seeds. An ancestor to modern day perching birds like sparrows, finches, robins and crows flew around 52 million years ago, a new study found. The paper published in the journal Current Biology describes two new fossil bird species.

Source: Daily Mail February 07, 2019 16:06 UTC