In the animal kingdom, flight evolution is a rare ability. There's no shortage of animals that slither, burrow, crawl, walk, and swim, but the ability to take to the skies has always been reserved for some species. Despite these, dinosaurs evolved flight evolution happened several times.
A recent study shows the unappreciated aerodynamic skills of many feathered dinosaurs allowed more of the group to fly than previously thought.
Flight Evolution of Dinosaurs
In a study published in the journal Current Biology, entitled "Potential for Powered Flight Neard by Most Close Avialan Relatives, but Few Crossed its Threshold", researchers from the University of Hong Kong concluded that more species of dinosaurs were able to take to the skies than what we originally believed.
Instead of the typical flight evolution being a singular process of aerodynamic ability in only one lineage, the process might have been 'experiment' on by various feathered dinosaurs fluttering, flapping, moving, and flying in various ways.
Michael Pittman, co-author, and paleontologists explain that the paradigm shift involves recognizing that flight evolution arose independently across closely related groups of dinosaurs at roughly the same time. He adds that the discovery moves away from the convention that flight is a rare ability among the 'terrible lizards.
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What We Know of Dinosaurs
Most of our knowledge on the dinosaurs' flight ability stems from birds. Because all birds are considered living dinosaurs, the last remaining members of the famed family. The raptor-like predecessors of birds split from their dinosaur relatives in the Jurassic Era roughly 150 million years ago, explains the Smithsonian.
When the asteroid sparked a mass extinction, the chicxulub, 66 million years ago, the only dinosaurs to survive were the beaked birds and carry the legacy of the famed lizards to this day.
For decades, paleontologists differentiated ancient reptiles and dinosaurs due to the fact that dinosaurs were believed to not have the ability to fly or swim. Pittman says that dinosaurs weren't traditionally expected to fly. The change in traditional thinking came from recent discoveries, including findings on feathered dinosaurs and new technologies of analyzing and identifying fossils.
Beyond basic anatomy, paleontologists now use evolutionary classification known as cladistics to find out which traits were once shared between different animals. The technique provides a clearer picture of how dinosaur species were related to each other.
The ability to accurately discern which species were closely related is vital in reconstructing how feathered dinosaurs flight evolution occurred. Paleontologists also borrowed engineering techniques in order to study the aerodynamic capabilities of feathered dinosaurs. Allowing researchers to test which species would be able to flip through the air and which species would be permanently grounded.
A recent study shows that the dinosaurs evolutionary tree related to birds coincided with paleontologist reports. The closes relatives of early birds were found to be the deinonychosaurs, a family of feathered raptor-like dinosaurs containing the Velociraptor and Troodon.
Additionally, researchers discovered that in order for deinonychosaurs to fly evolved roughly three times to overcome mechanical constraints.
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