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posted by hubie on Tuesday October 29, @04:37PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Not all winged dinosaurs were necessarily capable of full flight, but this anatomical feature may have enabled them to travel further by flapping or gliding

Tiny tracks in South Korea symbolise a moment 120 million years ago when a dinosaur took advantage of its wings to cover ground in large leaps – the oldest track evidence of wing-assisted movement in these extinct animals.

Whether the creature, which was a raptor and not part of the lineage that led to birds, took full flight is uncertain. But the tracks support previous ideas that aerodynamics evolved multiple times across prehistoric lines, says Alexander Dececchi at Dakota State University in South Dakota.

“It’s pretty rare to find these kinds of [pre-flight] tracks, and then to find them in an animal that’s not even a bird – that’s pretty special,” he says.

Velociraptors and other raptors (dromaeosaurids) are the ancestors of modern birds, but their lineage split into avian and non-avian, or “paravian”, lines about 170 million years ago. Despite having feathers and wings, paravian dinosaurs generally seemed to lack the wingspan needed to offset their body weight, says team member Michael Pittman at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

But Pittman, Dececchi and their colleagues suspected that some paravian dinosaurs could fly, or at least glide, before full flight evolved in birds, based on muscles in their upper bodies. That suspicion grew stronger as they investigated more than 2600 rows of dinosaur tracks around the world.

One set of tracks, discovered during the construction of a shopping centre in south-eastern South Korea, showed surprisingly long spacing between steps made by a sparrow-sized raptor called Dromaeosauriformipes rarus.

[...] Further calculations and comparisons with fossil anatomy suggested he was right: the animal could not have made that stride with its legs alone. It was clearly flapping or gliding, possibly while launching or landing, says Pittman.

“I think the vast majority of feathered dinosaurs were probably doing what this guy was doing – using the wings to augment running, jumping, braking and turning,” says Pittman.

Journal reference: Theropod trackways as indirect evidence of pre-avian aerial behavior. DOI: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2413810121


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  • (Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday October 29, @06:15PM

    by Sourcery42 (6400) on Tuesday October 29, @06:15PM (#1379304)

    A sparrow-sized hopping gliding little chicken lizard sounds adorable. Terrible lizards indeed :)

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday October 29, @07:17PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday October 29, @07:17PM (#1379317)

    using the wings to augment running, jumping, braking and turning

    Would "Skipping" be a reasonable word?

    Interesting defense strategy idea: If you can kinda sorta not really glide, maybe having clear empty safe land headed downhill is a good survival strategy, you'll move faster than anything on legs. The wings would be dead weight going up hill and would get in the way in heavy vegetation. So I wonder if those things optimally lived on/around beach dunes, or mountain pastures. They don't have to be able to hover like a hummingbird, they just have to be able to run/glide/skip downhill faster than anything big enough to eat them.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 29, @07:22PM

      by VLM (445) on Tuesday October 29, @07:22PM (#1379320)

      Another weird idea: Fish eating birds.

      You don't have to be able to fly 3000 miles/season to migrate, you just have to move REALLY quickly and accurately a yard or two in order to catch/spear a fish. Or trilobite or whatever these dudes were eating. I suppose it would work as well with insects. Nice strong muscles and long limbs they can whip around like a dancer make it easier to catch fish or maybe bugs, yet no need for long distance flight.

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30, @01:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30, @01:47AM (#1379370)

    Wings but not "good at flying" seem to work for chickens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4OvGwPBzYQ [youtube.com]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idDtTGEbyGA [youtube.com]

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