Anatomists will tell you that every corpse tells a story, and the same is true of fossils . Long dead, animals can reveal strange clues as the passage of time compresses them into an imprint of a life. It means that sometimes you find stuff that just doesn’t make sense. Case in point, a new species of 120-million-year-old bird found with a throat full of stones. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The sparrow-sized bird (now known as Chromeornis funkyi ) had big teeth at the end of its beak like a larger fossil bird called Longipteryx but otherwise was very different. To Dr Jingmai O’Connor , associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago’s Field Museum, it was obvious that it was a new species, but she never could

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