Feathered dinosaur was a glider, not a flapper
SEP 25, 2013
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.027373
Los Angeles Times : Fifteen years ago paleontologists working in China’s Liaoning Province discovered the fossilized remains of a small dinosaur whose long, winglike forelimbs, hind legs, and tail were partially covered with feathers. Did those feathers help Microraptor, as the dinosaur was later named, fly like a bird? To answer the question, Colin Palmer of the University of Southampton in the UK and his collaborators built a life-sized model of Microraptor, equipped it with feathers, and tested its aerodynamics in a wind tunnel. According to their report in Nature Communications, Microraptor could hop off branches up to 30 meters in height and glide comfortably to the ground. However, it couldn’t fly like a bird, nor did its feathers appear to confer any aerodynamical advantage: When the model dinosaur was stripped of its feathers, its lift-to-drag ratio remained the same.
© 2013 American Institute of Physics
