Yi
qi:
Dinosaur
Another
Winged
The picture above, from National Geographic, and the one
below, from Science News, are artist’s conceptions of Yi qi,
another winged dinosaur, found in China and described recently
in the journal Nature by Xing Xu and colleagues. This one is
pigeon-sized, much smaller than the “poodle from hell” I
wrote about a few days ago. The name is Mandarin for “strange
wing,” and is pronounced “yee chee.”
This winged theropod lived about 160 million years ago, and
only one individual has has yet been found. (A theropod is a
particular category of dinosaur, from some of which all modern
birds descended.)
The fossil is incomplete, missing the hind parts; so the tail
in the paintings represents the artist’s imagination.
Unlike the early ancestors of birds, it had a naked, bat-like
membrane stretched between the digits of its forelimbs and its
body. While it had feathers, there were none on its wings
except for the leading edges.
Because of the missing tail, we don’t know whether the
creature could actually glide or fly or both; but the
discoverers are guessing from its weight distribution it
probably glided mostly.
Two ways reptiles flew
Pterosaur
For decades, it has been thought that reptiles took to the
skies in one of two ways.
(1.) Many dinosaurs grew feathers–mostly fuzzy pin
feathers–probably as protection for their bodies, in the same
way fur provides such protection for mammals. Later, some of
these developed into long, strong feathers for gliding; and
eventually some small, feathered dinosaurs developed wings
covered with feathers for flying.
(2.) Pterosaurs, however, were a different branch of reptile
which never developed feathers. They flew with long, leathery,
bat-like wings.
Yi qi took a strange middle path. It had feathers on it’s
body, but only on the leading edges of it’s wings. The rest of
the wings were just covered with skin like a pterosaur’s wing.
Nature provided the following amusing video about Yi qi’s
possible flight capabilities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF_FOay9d5c
“There are many questions remaining to answer about this
bizarre dinosaur,” says Xu, who is making plans to search for
more specimens.
In the late Jurassic period, when Yi lived, there were all
manner of dinosaurs with varying shapes, sizes, and numbers
of wings. It was a world of not-quite-birds and just-aboutbirds—and now bat-winged dinosaurs, too! [National
Geographic]
“What a grand age of experimentation!” says Daniel Ksepka from
the Bruce Museum, who was not involved in the study.”
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Sources:
National Geographic
Science News