(Photo courtesy of Wired.com)

Wired.com has an excellent post on birds from the Mesozoic era; including the Jeholornis:

Jeholornis is the most primitive bird in this guide. It had very tiny teeth, short clawed wings and a very long, bony tail. "In that sense, it still retains the long, bony tails of the dinosaurs," Chiappe said.

It had feet capable of clasping branches, which suggests it might have lived or have spent a good amount of time perching in trees, Chiappe says.  It didn't have a hard, ossified breast bone, which suggests it probably wasn't very good at flying. "They could have fluttered from one tree to another," Chiappe said. But these turkey-vulture-sized birds probably weren't long-range flyers.

To read more and view the slideshow, please visit http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/paleo-birding/.