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Four-winged dinosaurs from China

2003; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 421; Issue: 6921 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/nature01342

1476-4687

Xing Xu, Zhonghe Zhou, Xiaolin Wang, Xuewen Kuang, Fucheng Zhang, Xiangke Du,

Ichthyology and Marine Biology

Although the dinosaurian hypothesis of bird origins is widely accepted, debate remains about how the ancestor of birds first learned to fly. Here we provide new evidence suggesting that basal dromaeosaurid dinosaurs were four-winged animals and probably could glide, representing an intermediate stage towards the active, flapping-flight stage. The new discovery conforms to the predictions of early hypotheses that proavians passed through a tetrapteryx stage.