Texas Tech Paleontologist’s Discovery Ignites Discussion Around The World

Written by Gretchen Pressley
With contributed work by John Davis and Kippra Hopper

After a careful re-examination of fossil remains from one of the earliest-known flying dinosaurs, a Texas Tech researcher along with a retired aeronautical engineer from Ottawa, Canada, have discovered that this feathered dinosaur used two sets of wings, much like the design of a biplane.

The flying dinosaur, called Microraptor gui, inhabited the earth during the Cretaceous period in northeastern China 125 million years ago, says Sankar Chatterjee, Horn professor of museum sciences and curator of paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech University.

The fossils of Microraptor were discovered in 2000 in a lake bed dubbed as the' Cretaceous Pompeii,' were hundreds of specimens of fish, insects, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and pterosaurs have been found in ash beds. Microraptor was described in the journal Nature in 2003 by the Chinese paleontologists, who speculated that this animal spread its hind legs out laterally and glided with its wings in a tandem pattern, much like dragonflies.

However, based on the recent review, Chatterjee is offering an alternate hypothesis. According to his research, the dinosaur may have used its double sets of feathers as upper and lower sets of wings, much like the biplanes of the Wright Brothers. Chatterjee published his results in the recent issue of the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Chatterjee says that if the Microraptor had flown with its legs splayed out, the legs would have dislocated from the hips. No dinosaurs could extend their legs sideways. Also, the way the asymmetric flight feathers on the feet are designed is another tell-tale clue as to how the microraptor held its legs to move through the air.

“If you look at the hip bones and the way the feathers are designed, you really have no other choice than to come up with this biplane design,” Chatterjee says. “That’s the only solution.”

With help from his colleague, R. Jack Templin, Chatterjee calculated the flight performance of Microraptor using a computer simulation model and found that this 2-pound dinosaur was an excellent glider with its biplane design, but could not flap its wings.

To fully utilize both sets of wings, the creature could have held its legs below the body in flight, which would create two staggered wing sections. The arm-wing section would be higher and slightly ahead of the leg-wing section. Like the Wright 1903 Flyer, Microraptor, a novice flyer, took to the air with two sets of wings.

Chatterjee says the bird could glide about 120 feet from tree to tree without using muscular energy. It probably would have swooped down, then automatically glided back up into the tree tops in an undulating fashion.

“This is the easiest way to fly from tree to tree,” he says.

It is not clear if this unusual method of flying was an evolutionary step on the way to modern bird flight or a brief offshoot by nature that soon failed. However, according to the researchers, the fossil evidence points towards Microraptor gui as an important evolutionary step towards modern birds.

"This Microraptor came about somewhere in between the climbing and flying Microraptors," Chatterjee says. "It's a nice transitional adaptation. And it's designed like the Wright Brother's plane. The evolution of flight in birds in much like the evolution of aeronautical design."

Sankar Chatterjee

Sankar Chatterjee, the curator of paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech and Horn professor of Geosciences, can be reached at (806) 742-1986 or sankar.chatterjee@ttu.edu.

This year, Chatterjee received the L. Rama Rao Birth Centenary Award, the most prestigious award presented by the Geological Society of India. He was recognized for his significant contributions to understanding the cause and consequences of dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago, the discovery of Maastrichition dinosaurs and their eggs and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in and around the Deccan Traps of India. Visit Dr. Chatterjee's Faculty Page.