Biplane ‘Raptors
12:29 am
The little dromaeosaur Microraptor gui sported long flight feathers on both its arms and legs. When first described, it was reconstructed as a sort of dinosaurian flying squirrel, with limbs outstretched in order to maximize lift and glide from tree to tree. A new study by Sankar Chatterjee and R. Jack Templin (published online today) proposes a different flight profile. They propose that if Microraptor tucked its legs up in a more dinosaur-/bird-like fashion, then its leg feathers would have splayed out horizontally—below and somewhat behind the wings on its forelimbs.
If this interpretation is correct, then Microraptor would have been the Mesozoic equivalent of a biplane—maybe not quite so advanced as tyrannosaurs in F-14s, but pretty nifty nonetheless.
Further reading:
Chatterjee, S. and Templin, J. R. 2007. Biplane wing planform and flight performance of the feathered dinosaur Microraptor gui. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0609975104. PDF.
Story in The Guardian.
Update 1/25:
More comprehensive Microraptor posts are up at Living the Scientific Life and microecos.
La información es muy interesante. Agradezco la posibilidad de poder acceder gratuitamente.
A biplane dinobird? What grand, lovely fun! I’m consistently amazed by the Blind Watchmaker’s ability to surprise us. After twenty years of being a fossil-nut, I suppose I should have gotten used to it, but I haven’t. And I hope I never do.
Looking at your illustration, Matt, my instant thought is “of course, flight feathers on the legs would give it better control when it was diving at a prey animal.”
The “reconstructed” link is to a photo from my webpage on the Microraptor gui:
http://www.skewsme.com/microraptor.html
Awesome story. I need to illustrate this bugger, actually.