Maybe it's just me, but...

...this episode of NOVA I'm watching has this very cool dinosaur, which no one can agree on. Was it really a dino? How did it fly? Did it glide? What where the purpose of the back limb feathers? How awesome.


Microraptor ("small thief") is a genus of small, dromaeosaurid dinosaur. About two dozen well-preserved fossil specimens have been recovered from Liaoning, China. They date from the early Cretaceous Period (Barremian stage), 130-125.5 million years ago. Two species have been named, M. zhaoianus and M. gui. It has recently been suggested that all of the specimens belong to a single species, which is properly called M. zhaoianus. Cryptovolans, another four-winged dromaeosaur, may also be a species of Microraptor.^[1]

Like Archaeopteryx, Microraptor provides important evidence about the evolutionary relationship between birds and dinosaurs. Microraptor had long pennaceous feathers that form wing-like surfaces on the arms and tail but also, surprisingly, on the legs. This led Xu (2003) to describe it as a "four winged dinosaur", and to speculate that it may have glided using all four limbs for lift." - Wikipedia