Birds of a feather

The discovery of feathered dinosaurs led to our understanding that birds are the descendents of dinosaurs, specifically the group of dinosaurs that includes the sauropods, like Apatosaurus and the theropods like Tyrannosaurus.

However, the discovery of feather-like structures in a small dinosaur from the other major dinosaur lineage—the group that includes Triceratops and Steogsaurus—complicates things.

Tianyulong is a small herbivorous dinosaur from China with feather-like structures along its spine and tail. Paleontologists are not yet sure whether these are feathers as seen in other feathered dinosaurs, or some other sort of body covering evolutionarily unrelated to true feathers.

Scientists refer to the structures on Tianyulong as “dinofuzz”, a fitting term because this new fossil fuzzes up our picture of dinosaur-bird relationships, at least for now.

Source: Xio-ting Zheng, et al., 2009, An Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid dinosaur with filamentous integumentary structures. Nature 458:333-336.

Modeling dinosaur "flight"

An unusual feathered dinosaur discovered in China raises questions about the origin of flight.

Other small dinosaurs have been found with traces of feathers on the front two legs but Microraptor had feathers on the back legs, as well. Its asymmetrical feathers indicate that the animal was capable of gliding or flying, so it assumed that Microraptor made its home in trees and glided, or flew from tree to tree like modern flying squirrels.

To test these ideas, researchers at the University of Kansas constructed a model of Microraptor, using pheasant feather for its wings, and designed a slingshot to launch it. The Microraptor model glided 24 meters, or 26 yards.

Of course, a plastic model with pheasant feathers may not be an accurate model of an extinct feathered dinosaur, but it is a first step in attempting to understand how this unique animal lived.

Summarized in Earth, May, 2009, p. 13 (Emily Lant); research by David Alexander & David Burnham, University of Kansas. Click here for a video of the model's flight!

Original report on Microraptor: Xu, X., Zhou, Z., Wang, X., Kuang, X., Zhang, F. and Du, X. (2003). "Four-winged dinosaurs from China." Nature, 421(6921): 335-340, 23 Jan 2003. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6921/full/nature01342.html