Ancient Bird Swallowed 800 Rocks and Choked to Death, Scientists Say

Around 120 million years ago, a bird swallowed over 800 tiny stones and choked to death as a result. Paleontologists aren’t sure why.

Like many recent fossil “discoveries,” researchers with the Field Museum were browsing through a collection of old fossils when they noticed something that appeared to be an entirely new species.

They found that it represented a new species of bird (and therefore dinosaur) and named it Chromeornis funkyi , or a “Funky Chromeo bird,” in honor of the electro-funk band. But the most striking thing about Chromeornis , according to the researchers, was its apparent cause of death: suffocation from swallowing rocks.

The fossil, discovered at the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in China, is the subject of an upcoming paper in Palaeontologia Electronica .