Birds flew over dinosaurs’ heads, study suggests

An analysis of this fossilized wing of one of the primitive birds which is more than 125-million years old may suggest that it was capable of flying in a way that is similar to the modern birds of today according to paleontologists.

Ancient birds may have flown over the heads of dinosaurs but a few aspects of the precise flight modes of these early fliers still remain unclear.

What was most attention-grabbing was the intricate fiber community which matched the muscle, tendon and ligament association of recent birds that helped them to place & management the primary feathers of their wings.

This might support the idea that at least a part of these ancient birds could fly in a similar way to today’s birds.

This fossil, which was found round Central Spain reveals that it wasn’t simply articulated bones within the wing however even the stays of the feathers in addition to the smooth concern within the wing have been discovered.

“It’s very surprising that despite being skeletally quite different from their modern counterparts, these primitive birds show striking similarities in their soft anatomy”, said lead author Guillermo Navalon, PhD student at University of Bristol in UK.

You may be aware that birds actually have an exceptionally long evolutionary history with the most ancient ancestor-the famed Archaeopteryx-living approximately 150 million years ago in what we know today as southern Germany. Since the 1990s, hundreds, if not thousands, of dinosaurs with feathers have been unearthed in China – helping firm up the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Extraordinary discoveries like this one are allowing researchers to analyze the most complex factors of the first steps in birds’ evolution.

Even though this fossil found in Spain does strengthen the argument that a few early birds could have been able to fly as well, it is still unknown as to how accomplished they were at this feat and whether they were able to fly high over the dinosaurs or could just manage short flights while being close to the ground.

“The anatomical match between the muscle network preserved in the fossil and those that characterize the wings of living birds strongly indicates that a few of the earliest birds were capable of aerodynamic prowess like many present-day birds”, said Luis M. Chiappe, the investigation’s senior scientist.