Microraptor - Four winged dino!!

                    In 2005, Liaoning produced one of the most astinishing looking dinosaurs ever found - Microraptor gui. It had feathers in all four limbs! Moreover, those four wings were composed of FLIGHT FEATHERS. This means that this animal could fly - probably more accurately, glide - from tree to tree. The presence of the flight feathers on this dinosaur blurred the line between dinosaurs and birds. And it seems that four-winged gliding is the origin of two- winggled powered flight of the birds like Archaeopteryx. Microraptor was not far from the actual bird!



Fossil specimine of Microraptor gui showing its four wings


                Yet a huge mystery is still being unsolved. How exactly did Microraptors fly? Different scientists have different ideas. The left one shows the way scientists first thought of. The right show the latest published idea - "the biplane idea."

     
Two possible ways of flight of Microraptor


                Anyway, the important thing is that feathers evolved in bipedal, carnivorous dinosaurs before the origin of birds or flight.



                    Summary of dinosaur and its feather
Dinosaur
 Type of feather


Sinosauropteryx


Sinornithosaurus
    


Microraptor
       and  


                    So, actually,  dinosaurs are not extinct - in fact, instead of rooling the land, they now rule the sky!

 
One modern dinosaur - Peregine falcon (Falco peregrinus)


For latest dinosaur discoveries,  go to  Nature, Science, or Scientific American.


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