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Dinosaur May Have Resembled the Biplane - Associated Press (appeared in USA
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Flying dinos had bi-plane design – BBC
Flight club: how a dinosaur got the hang of gliding – Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney,
Australia)
'Microraptor gui' glided like biplane - Fresh analysis shows – The Money Times
(India)
Bird wings evolved from biplane dinosaurs – Cosmos (Australia)
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Dinosaur May Have Resembled the Biplane - Associated Press (appeared in USA
Today, Washington Post, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Toronto Star,
Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Houston Chronicle, Denver Post,
Salon, LiveScience.com, Scientific American, TechNewsWorld.com, Kansas.com,
Birmingham News, Casper Star-Tribune (Wyoming), Canton Repository (Ohio),
Wilmington Morning Star (North Carolina), Lexington Herald Leader (KY), The
Spokesman Review (Washington), Seattle Times, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Kansas City
Star, Hamilton Spectator (Canada), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Long Beach PressTelegram (California), Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, NC), Tampa Bay Tribune,
North County Times (California), Durham Herald Sun (North Carolina), Carlsbad
Current Argus (New Mexico), Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jackson News Tribune
(Wyoming), Pierceland Herald (Canada), Jordan Falls News (Iowa), Sky Valley Journal
(Wyoming), Ottawa Recorder (Canada), Herald News Daily (North Dakota), Myrtle
Beach Sun News (South Carolina), Centre Daily Times (Pennsylvania), The Benton Crier
(Iowa), Macon Telegraph (Georgia), Newsday (New York), Sam Luis Obsipo Tribune,
San Jose Mercury News, Bradenton Herald (Florida), Pioneer Press (Minnesota),
Columbus Ledger Enquirer (Georgia), Monterey County Herald (California), Contra
Costa Times (California), Belleville News-Democrat (Illinois)
MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, Discovery Channel News, Kentucky.com,
WIFR-TV (Rockford, IL), WIS-TV (Washington, D.C.), WLUC-TV (Detroit), WVVA-TV
(West Virginia), KTIV-TV (Sioux City, IA), KTTC-TV (Minnesota), WSJV-TV (South
Bend), WLBT-TV (Biloxi, MS), Christian Broadcasting Network (Virginia),
MyFoxnews.com (Houston), WPRI-TV (Rhode Island), EarthTimes.org, inthenews.co.uk
(United Kingdom), KCAU-TV (Iowa), KOIM-TV (Oregon), KXAN-TV (Austin), KVIA-TV
(El Paso), KTVO-TV (Missouri), KTUU-TV (Arkansas) WHBF-TV (Illinois), WANE-TV
(Ft. Wayne, IN), KWWL (Iowa), KGBT-TV (Harlingen), KAIT-TV (Arkansas), KNDO-TV
(Washington State), KFVS (Missouri), WWAY-TV (North Carolina), WMC-TV
(Tennessee), WSTM-TV (New York), WBOC-TV (Maryland), KBSD-TV (Kansas),
WTVM-TV (Georgia), KTRV-TV (Boise), KRIS-TV (Corpus Christi), KOLD-TV
(Arizona), KESQ-TV (California), WHO-TV (Iowa), WBAY-TV (Green Bay), WREG-TV
(Tennessee), KPLC-TV (Louisiana)
When the Wright Brothers first took to the sky in a biplane, they were using a design
nature may have tried 125 million years earlier. A new study of one of the earliest
feathered dinosaurs suggests it may have had upper and lower sets of wings, much like
the biplanes of early aviation. Today, the biplane is widely considered an old-fashioned
rarity.
And the design is no longer seen in birds, though it's not clear if it was a step on the way
to modern birds or a dead end, tested by nature and discarded.
The intriguing possibility of a biplane dinosaur _ Microraptor gui _ is suggested by
Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University in this week's online issue of Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
Microraptor was described by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003 as
having aerodynamic feathers on both its arms and legs. Xu suggested at the time that it
glided, extending its legs backward so its wings were arranged one behind the other, like
a dragonfly.
But that would be aerodynamically inefficient for a feathered creature, Chatterjee
concluded, noting that the feathers on the legs would not face forward.
Instead, he suggested, the legs of the two-pound creature could have been held below the
body in flight, creating two staggered wing sections, the upper one slightly ahead of the
lower one.
One other flying dinosaur, Pedopenna, also had feathers on its legs, Chatterjee said, and
modern raptors such as falcons have short feathers on their upper legs which reduce air
resistance as they fly.
"Aircraft designers have mimicked many of nature's flight 'inventions,' usually
inadvertently," Chatterjee wrote. "Now, it seems likely that Microraptor invented the
biplane 125 million years before the Wright 1903 Flyer."
Xu, who said a variety of reconstructions have been suggested since the original one,
called Chatterjee's proposal "likely," but added that "we really need to work painstakingly
to check all details and have an accurate reconstruction, and then we can compare
different models in computer or even in wind tunnel, which we are planning to do."
"Microraptor is a critical species in understanding the origin of flight," added Xu, who
was not associated with Chatterjee's research team.
Matthew Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural
History, said the question focuses on what the legs can do, and it's a difficult problem
because the fossils are flat and require interpretation as to what they would have looked
like in three dimensions.
Carrano, who also was not part of Chatterjee's research team, said this creature was
probably a side branch rather than a stage evolution had to pass through on the way to
today's birds.
"It's difficult to see how this animal does anything well, it seems so ungainly," Carrano
said. "It forces us to think creatively because it's so far off the beaten path."
There are often such experiments that fall by the wayside, he said.
"The important thing is, because we've now got all these feathered dinosaurs to look at, it
has kind of opened the gates a bit to speculating about how flight evolved," Carrano said.
Chatterjee's research was funded by Texas Tech University.
Flying dinos had bi-plane design – BBC
The first flying dinosaurs took to the air in a similar way to a World War I bi-plane, a
study shows.
A fresh analysis of an early feathered fossil dinosaur suggests that it dropped its hind legs
below its body, adopting a bi-plane-like form.
This contrasts with earlier reconstructions showing the dinosaur maintaining its wings in
a tandem pattern, a bit like a dragonfly.
Details appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
The ancestors of modern birds are thought to have been small, feathered, dinosaurs.
Microraptor gui , which lived 125 million years ago, was one of the earliest gliders. It
appears to have utilised four wings, as it had long and asymmetric flight feathers on both
its hands and feet.
Spread 'em
An initial assessment of Microraptor fossils from China suggested the animal spread its
legs out laterally and maintained its wings in a tandem pattern, in a similar manner to
dragonflies.
Now, researchers Sankar Chatterjee and R Jack Templin offer an alternative hypothesis.
Their evaluations of the limb joints and feather orientation indicate that a tandem wing
design would neither have achieved suitable lift, nor enabled Microraptor to walk on the
ground easily.
Instead, the scientists report that its hind legs were positioned below the body, in a biplane fashion.
Dr Chatterjee, from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, US, explained that two lines of
evidence had led the team to this conclusion.
Firstly, the researchers argue, dinosaurs and birds move their legs in a vertical plane, not
sideways as the tandem flight pattern requires.
Secondly, the feathers on Microraptor 's hind legs are asymmetrical; one of the two vanes
that extend either side of the shaft is narrower than the other.
Forward facing
Aerodynamically, the narrow leading edge of these feathers should face forward in flight,
against the direction of airflow. This would have given the flying reptiles lift.
In the tandem pattern, these would have faced sideways.
"We had no other choice but to go for the bi-plane configuration," Dr Chatterjee told
BBC News.
A computer flight simulation using this design showed that Microraptor would undulate
up and down, an ideal approach for gliding between trees.
The research might also shed light on a contentious debate over the evolution of bird
flight.
Some researchers argue that this evolutionary development occurred from the ground up.
Others contend that small, feathered dinosaurs were already living in treetops and
developed flight in order to get from one tree to another.
This "trees down" model is the one favoured by Chatterjee and Templin.
Alternatively, the bi-plane-like phase could just represent a failed evolutionary
experiment.
The Wright stuff
If one accepted the evolutionary importance of the bi-plane formation, there were striking
parallels between bird flight and the development of aircraft, said Dr Chatterjee.
Archaeopteryx , regarded as the earliest fossil bird, has what could be described as a
monoplane design.
The shift from a bi-plane to a monoplane design could have been facilitated by a much
broader wingspan which would have provided increased lift. This mirrors historical
developments in aviation.
"We see that the Wright brothers came up with a design for which there was no precedent
in nature at the time," said Dr Chatterjee.
"This shows us that if there is a problem in engineering, sometimes there are only one or
two possible solutions."
Flight club: how a dinosaur got the hang of gliding – Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney,
Australia)
The ancestors of modern birds were built like biplanes, scientists say.
More than 125 million years before the Wright brothers made their first powered flight, a
dinosaur called Microraptor gui used two sets of wings to glide between trees.
The dinosaur is part of a family that preceded the first known bird, Archaeopteryx.
Microraptor had long, asymmetric flight feathers on its hands and feet. Initial assessments
of fossils found in China in the past 10 years led scientists to conclude that the dinosaur
spread its legs out laterally and maintained its wings in a tandem pattern, like a dragonfly.
But Sankar Chatterjee and Jack Templin at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas,
have proposed a new idea. After re-examining the limb joints and the direction of the
feathers, they concluded that a tandem wing design would not have given the dinosaur
enough lift, nor would the dinosaur have been able to walk on the ground. They suggest
instead that the one-kilogram, 40-centimetre-long Microraptor positioned its hind legs
below its body when gliding, adopting a biplane-like posture.
This early evolutionary step by the ancestors of birds was coincidentally copied by
Wilbur and Orville Wright to make the first piloted powered flight in 1903.
"Aircraft designers have mimicked many of nature's flight inventions, usually
inadvertently," Professor Chatterjee wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. "Now it seems likely that Microraptor invented the biplane 125
million years before the Wright 1903 Flyer."
Professor Chatterjee's computer model indicated that the biplane posture was ideal for
gliding among trees: the dinosaur would leap off a branch and lose height at first, before
swooping and ending up on a nearby branch. Its form of flight is known as phugoid
gliding, seen today in woodland birds.
The scientists' evidence also indicated that Microraptor was not capable of taking off
from the ground and that it was only a moderate glider. They said the dinosaur was
probably one of the earliest flying animals and the precursor to all bird flight.
Angela Milner, from the Natural History Museum in London, said that whether
Microraptor was "on the main line of evolution that led to powered flapping flight" or a
"side experiment" remained unclear.
'Microraptor gui' glided like biplane - Fresh analysis shows – The Money Times
(India)
The earliest flying dinosaurs glided between the trees much like the biplanes of early
aviation, a team of US and Canadian researchers said in their study published Tuesday in
the U.S. journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
After re-examining the fossil remains of Microraptor gui, one of the earliest gliders which
lived 125 million years ago in the early Cretaceous period in northeastern China,
researchers Sankar Chatterjee, Ph.D., Horn professor of museum sciences at Texas Tech
University, and R. Jack Templin, a retired aeronautical engineer from Ottawa, Ontario,
found that the creatures used two sets of long, asymmetric flight feathers, one on its
hands and the other on legs, for flying, similar to a biplane.
Contrary to an initial assessment of the fossils, done by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy
of Sciences in 2003, that the dinosaur spread its legs out laterally and maintained its
wings in a tandem pattern, like a dragonfly, Chatterjee and Templin have come up with a
new idea, saying that the creature dropped its hind legs below its body, adopting a
biplane-like posture.
The fresh analysis of Microraptor’s limb joints and the direction of the feathers revealed
that a dragonfly like tandem wing design would neither have made it possible for the 1kg,
16-inch-long creature to either achieve enough lift nor a capability to walk normally on
the ground, meaning that Microraptor was not capable of taking off from the ground and
that it was only a moderate glider.
During the flight the creature’s posture could have created two staggered wing sections,
the upper one slightly ahead of the lower one, Chatterjee's research suggested.
Funded by Texas Tech University, the study also calculated that Microraptor could have
traveled more than 40 metres with a small jump from a tall tree. It would have fallen
quickly to begin with, but then could have swooped back up to land on the branch of
another tree.
"Aircraft designers have mimicked many of nature's flight inventions, usually
inadvertently," wrote Professor Chatterjee. "Now it seems likely that Microraptor
invented the biplane 125m years before the Wright 1903 Flyer."
The fossils of Microraptor gui were discovered among hundreds of small, well preserved
feathered theropods from the Early Crestaceous Jehol Group of northeastern China. The
dinosaur is part of a family that preceded the first known bird, Archaeopteryx, which
could be described as a monoplane design.
Besides Pedopenna, one more flying dinosaur that also had feathers on its legs, modern
raptors such as falcons have short feathers on their upper legs that reduce air resistance as
they fly, Chatterjee said.
Xu, who was not associated with Chatterjee's research team, although called the latest
study “likely” but at the same time he said that "we really need to work painstakingly to
check all details and have an accurate reconstruction, and then we can compare different
models in computer or even in wind tunnel, which we are planning to do.''
"Microraptor is a critical species in understanding the origin of flight," added Xu.
125 million years before Kitty Hawk there was Microraptor gui – Itwire.com
A small winged dinosaur called Microraptor gui may well have been nature's predecessor
of the famous flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Microraptor
gui, which weighed just 1kg may have had a pair of wings arranged in a way that
resembled the Wright brothers' biplane that achieved the first recorded heavier than air
powered flight.
According to a six-page paper penned by Professor Sankar Chatterjee, a paleontologist at
Texas Tech University, presented this week in the online Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, the wings of Microraptor could have resembled a staggered
biplane configuration during flight.
Professor Chatterjee writes that a computer simulation of the flight performance of
Microraptor suggests that its biplane wings were adapted for gliding between trees, where
the horizontal feathered tail offered additional lift and stability and controlled pitch. Like
the Wright 1903 Flyer, Microraptor, a gliding relative of early birds, took to the air with
two sets of wings.
According to Professor Chatterjee, the evolution of powered flight in birds from theropod
dinosaurs is recognized as the key adaptive breakthrough that contributed to the
biological success of this group.
"The transformation of wing design from nonavian dinosaurs to early birds is beginning
to unravel in recent times from a wealth of fossil record from China. Hundreds of small,
exquisitely preserved, feathered theropods were discovered in the Early Cretaceous Jehol
Group of northeastern China as they died some 125 million years ago, smothered in the
'Cretaceous Pompeii'," Professor Chatterjee says in his paper.
Bird wings evolved from biplane dinosaurs – Cosmos (Australia)
The origin of powered flight in modern birds was in biplane-like dinosaurs living in trees
125 million years ago, according to a new U.S. and Canadian study.
"The origin of avian flight has been debated for a century," said co-author Sankar
Charterjee from Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, USA. His team claim to have
finally settled the long-standing debate, discovering that powered flight developed from
dinosaurs that glided down from trees, rather than taking off from the ground.
The team, who reported their results today in the U.S. journal, Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, studied fossils of the feathered dinosaur Microraptor gui,
which lived 125 million years ago in the early Cretaceous period in northeastern China.
Microraptor was around 77 cm long, including its tail, and weighed about 1 kg.
When Microraptor skeletons were first discovered in 2003, scientists were surprised to
find that they had not one set of wings, but two. In addition to the 'standard' wings on the
animals' forelimbs, Microraptor's feet and legs sported flight feathers as well. At the time,
scientists thought two sets of wings sat behind one another in tandem, a bit like a
modern-day bat.
But Charterjee, and his Canadian colleague R. Jack Templin, realised that the wings were
actually positioned with one set of wings above the other, like early biplanes.
The team realised that this wing configuration could not provide a Microraptor with
powered flight; the dinosaurs would have been capable only of gliding. More
importantly, the dinosaur had no way of lifting their wings up, so during a ground-based
take-off the wings would have been damaged.
By analysing the dinosaur's aerodynamics, the researchers calculated that Microraptor
could have travelled more than 40 metres with a small jump from a tall tree. It would
have fallen quickly to begin with, but then could have swooped back up to land on the
branch of another tree.
According to the researchers, "this mode of transportation would have been energetically
very efficient for Microraptor." Gliding between trees doesn't require much energy
because it is assisted by gravity, they said.
Further analysis of the feathers and wings showed that the Microraptor could not have
landed on the ground after jumping from a tree. The wings were not capable of acting
like a parachute, and they would have crashed into the ground at up to 8.7 metres per
second - enough to cause serious injury.
According to the study, this four-winged gliding system could have occurred on the
evolutionary tree in one of two places. Either it was an evolutionary experiment in one
group of dinosaurs that eventually failed, or avian flight went through a four-winged
stage before losing one of the sets of wings.
Fossil evidence supports the latter view, according to the researchers, because the
skeletons of six other dinosaurs that lived from 140 million to 125 million years ago
show a gradual shift from wings on both hind and forelimbs toward wings only on the
forelimbs.