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World’s largest four-winged dinosaur discovered
- bane 12y agoSo fantasy dragons and Avatar notwithstanding, six limbs on a land dweller is pretty weird. I'm going to have to question this creature either being real or actually having four-wings and a pair of legs. http://www.thegeektwins.com/2010/06/flawed-science-of-avatar-six-legs.html#.U8ZzkPldVmg http://www.thegeektwins.com/2010/06/flawed-science-of-avatar... edit Looking a bit more into it, it looks like the artist's picture is a hopeful fantasy. The class of animals were more like flying squirrels in the sense that they used their hind legs for lift as well. So they're four limbed animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microraptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microraptor
- tokenadult 12y agoDinosaurs are part of the tetrapod clade, so I never expected "four-winged" to mean anything other than that the hind limbs and forelimbs are both feathered and used for flight. That's what the artist's conception based on the discovered fossils shows.
- bane 12y agoOh wow. I think I need more coffee. The first few times I looked at the artist's rendering, I swear I thought it was a 4 winged, two legged animal. But you're right, they rendered it as a tetrapod.
- chton 12y agoThe drawing is very confusing. It looks as if the back wings are just obscuring clawed legs rather than being the legs themselves. I had exactly the same thought as you and came here to comment the same thing.
- JackFr 12y agoFlight of the Dragons postulates a four-limbed winged dragon, with wings evolving from ribs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_Dragons_%28book%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_Dragons_%28book%2...
- freehunter 12y agoIt's also a fiction book.
- spiritplumber 12y agoDraco volans has rib-wings, though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_volans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_volans
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- bostonpete 12y agoDid they change the artist's picture or something? The image I see in the article shows 4 limbs, all of them wings.
- smoyer 12y agoI know it doesn't fit the profile (a lion's body and hind legs), but when I first saw the picture, I immediately thought "that's a griffin". The fact that there were also feathers on the hind legs and tail-feathers instead of a lion's tail were only things I noticed after looking more closely!
- bostonpete 12y agoWell, it would also need two front legs.
- mkoryak 12y agoFYI: The fossil image in the article is actually 600x900: http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/Changyuraptor-photo.jpg http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/up...
- mcguire 12y agoGiven the rarity of non-bone fossilization, that is a beautiful fossil.
- Istof 12y agoI wonder which conditions are required to get a whole-body fossil
- Fuzzwah 12y agoThe best guess as to why this area in China contains so many well preserved fossils boils down to how quickly the remains were covered in volcanic ash. "Xu has had a bounty of fossils to work on, particularly from Liaoning. The creatures unearthed there are remarkably well preserved, perhaps because they were entombed quickly during volcanic eruptions and mudslides between 160 million and 120 million years ago. The rocks record fine details including the imprints of feathers, which allowed Xu to determine that a fierce 9-metre-long tyrannosaurid, which he named Yutyrannus, had a coat of long feathers" http://www.nature.com/news/china-s-dinosaur-hunter-the-ground-breaker-1.11352 http://www.nature.com/news/china-s-dinosaur-hunter-the-groun... "Fossils of big animals are rare—and fossils of small organisms are rarer still, because small, delicate bodies decompose more readily than larger ones. However, in Liaoning even small animals and insects were well preserved. This is because when plants and animals died there, they often washed into one of the many streams and lakes in the region. More importantly, they were quickly covered in volcanic ash soon after death. Because the remains were buried so rapidly, many of the Liaoning fossils preserve much of the entire organism in remarkable detail." http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/dinos/liaoning.php http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/dinos/liaoning.php
- create_acct 12y agoThe largest wing span (20-24 feet) for a bird ever known was discovered this week as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagornis_sandersi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagornis_sandersi
- tempestn 12y agoWow, that article linked to this[1], from which I learned that the largest flying Pterosaurs had wingspans of over 10m (~35ft), and weighed upwards of 250kg (550lb). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur_size#Speculation_about_pterosaur_size_and_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur_size#Speculation_abo...
- quarterwave 12y agoI was curious how feathers -> flight evolved, came across this article: http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/thedinobirdconnection/a/originflight.htm http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/thedinobirdconnection/a/origin...
- bitwize 12y agoA creature too awesome to have had any right to exist. I was like "Didn't I have to fight that thing in Shadow of the Colossus?"
- NickWarner775 12y agoCrazy to think there are still so many species that we havnt discovered. Now Im waiting for the discovery of dragon fossils.
- tempestn 12y agoThis kind of thing is so awesome. I want my Jurassic Park, dang it!
- justinngc 12y agoWe should not forget that dinosaurs are actually reptiles, and that they "evolved" from reptiles to birds to adjust to changes and circumstances. More info here: http://www.mapoflife.org/topics/topic_431_Evolution-of-birds-from-feathered-reptiles/ http://www.mapoflife.org/topics/topic_431_Evolution-of-birds...