There was a bird which lived in the late Jurassic
by a lake surrounded by lush forests. It was about
the size of a bantam rooster, had a long tail like 
its reptilian ancestors, and vestigal forearms that 
ended in claws, handy for climbing trees. It also
flapped its wings in flight. It had no teeth in it s bill
and this fossil is the earliest bird known to 
paleontology to have abandoned the toothy jaws
of its ancestors, replacing them with a true avian beak.
This fossil was found in China last year, and lived at 
approximately the same time as Archeopteryx, the 
transitional reptile-bird which lived 147 million years
ago. This fossil species lived 70 million years earlier
than the previously oldest known toothless bird,
Gobipteryx, from Mongolia. This bird, called Confuciusoris,
provides compelling evidence that nature's initial experimentation
with birds must have spread quickly into a global phenomenon
played out in different habitats and marked by seemingly rapid
evolutionary transitions. The researchers suggest that this bird
occupied a seperate limb of the avian family that branched off soon 
after the emergence of Archeopteryx, leading to Gobipteryx and
eventual extinction. This fossil shows that many forms of birds,
and stages of birds existed in the Jurassic period.
 "Evolution: A Convenient Fiction" by Hugh W. Nibley Nate