Showing posts with label dinosaurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dinosaurs. Show all posts

Monday, March 31, 2008

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