New batlike dinosaur was early experiment in flight

starstuff

New batlike dinosaur was early experiment in flight

An artist’s illustration of Ambopteryx

[size=0.6875]MIN WANG/INSTITUTE OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND PALEOANTHROPOLOGY/CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

[size=0.6875]

This only the second dinosaur to be discovered with both feathers and bat-like wings, the first being Yi qi discovered back in 2015.

This new fossil further confirms the finding that bat-like dinosaurs did indeed exist about 163 million years ago.

“This fossil seals the deal—there really were bat-winged dinosaurs,” says Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved with the study.

Yet these are not related to modern day birds as the wings might suggest. It was an evolutionary dead-end, an early experiment in flight that was unsuccessful.

However, although nearly 10,000 species of birds live today, no scansoriopterygids survived past the end of the Jurassic. That suggests their early experiment in flight was far less successful, O’Connor says.

“The idea that flight evolved more than once in dinosaurs is incredibly exciting and hasn’t quite sunk into the scientific community yet.”

This further reinforces the fact that the evolution of flight wasn't just a straight-forward path from dinosaurs to birds. It was more like a mixture of experiments most of which seem to have failed.

“The evolution of flight wasn’t a gradual march from dinosaur to bird,” Brusatte adds. “It involved lots of experimentation and tinkering.”

-

Additional sources:

Bat-Winged Dinosaur Discovery Poses Flight Puzzle

Small Jurassic Dinosaur May Have Flown Without Feathers