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"Dinosaurs Flight."
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Flying lizards big as planes
Imagine a giant flying creature as big as a plane. It's time to meet the enormous flying reptiles that swooped through the skies during the time of the dinosaurs. Each title in this new series digs deep into one fascinating area of the Dinosphere.
Book
Flying dinosaurs
The discovery of stunning, feathered dinosaur fossils coming out of China since 2006 suggest that these creatures were much more bird-like than paleontologists previously imagined. Further evidence—bones, genetics, eggs, behavior, and more—has shown a seamless transition from fleet-footed carnivores to the ancestors of modern birds. Mixing colorful portraits with news on the latest fossil findings and interviews with leading paleontologists in the United States, China, Europe, and Australia, John Pickrell explains and details dinosaurs' development of flight. This special capacity introduced a whole new range of abilities for the animals and helped them survive a mass extinction, when thousands of other dinosaur species that once populated the Earth did not. Pickrell also turns his journalistic eye toward the stories behind the latest discoveries, investigating the role of the Chinese black market in trading fossils, the controversies among various dinosaur hunters, the interference of national governments intent on protecting scientific information, and the race to publish findings first that make this research such a dynamic area of science.
eBook
Dinosaur rocket!
\"No longer content with building, zooming, or even rescuing, the dinosaurs now have their sights set on something much, much bigger ... the moon! Join our fearsome friends as they prepare for their cosmic journey: Is the rocket ready? Will the launch go smoothly? Can they make it to the moon? Another fast and furious adventure for anyone who loves dinosaurs and vehicles!\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Preserved soft anatomy confirms shoulder-powered upstroke of early theropod flyers, reveals enhanced early pygostylian upstroke, and explains early sternum loss
Anatomy of the first flying feathered dinosaurs, modern birds and crocodylians, proposes an ancestral flight system divided between shoulder and chest muscles, before the upstroke muscles migrated beneath the body. This ancestral flight system featured the dorsally positioned deltoids and supracoracoideus controlling the upstroke and the chest-bound pectoralis controlling the downstroke. Preserved soft anatomy is needed to contextualize the origin of the modern flight system, but this has remained elusive. Here we reveal the soft anatomy of the earliest theropod flyers preserved as residual skin chemistry covering the body and delimiting its margins. These data provide preserved soft anatomy that independently validate the ancestral theropod flight system. The heavily constructed shoulder and more weakly constructed chest in the early pygostylian Confuciusornis indicated by a preserved body profile, proposes the first upstroke-enhanced flight stroke. Slender ventral body profiles in the early-diverging birds Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis suggest habitual use of the pectoralis could not maintain the sternum through bone functional adaptations. Increased wing-assisted terrestrial locomotion potentially accelerated sternum loss through higher breathing requirements. Lower expected downstroke requirements in the early thermal soarer Sapeornis could have driven sternum loss through bone functional adaption, possibly encouraged by the higher breathing demands of a Confuciusornis-like upstroke. Both factors are supported by a slender ventral body profile. These data validate the ancestral shoulder/chest flight system and provide insights into novel upstroke-enhanced flight strokes and early sternum loss, filling important gaps in our understanding of the appearance of modern flight.
Journal Article
When birds had teeth
Not every dinosaur went extinct when a giant asteroid hit Earth. Some survived--and over millions of years they became the birds that share our world today! Each title in this new series digs deep into one fascinating area of the Dinosphere.
Book
A new Jurassic scansoriopterygid and the loss of membranous wings in theropod dinosaurs
Powered flight evolved independently in vertebrates in the pterosaurs, birds and bats, each of which has a different configuration of the bony elements and epidermal structures that form the wings
1
,
2
. Whereas the early fossil records of pterosaurs and bats are sparse, mounting evidence (primarily from China) of feathered non-avian dinosaurs and stemward avians that derive primarily from the Middle–Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous periods has enabled the slow piecing together of the origins of avian flight
3
,
4
. These fossils demonstrate that, close to the origin of flight, dinosaurs closely related to birds were experimenting with a diversity of wing structures
3
,
5
. One of the most surprising of these is that of the scansoriopterygid (Theropoda, Maniraptora)
Yi qi
, which has membranous wings—a flight apparatus that was previously unknown among theropods but that is used by both the pterosaur and bat lineages
6
. This observation was not universally accepted
7
. Here we describe a newly identified scansoriopterygid—which we name
Ambopteryx longibrachium
, gen. et sp. nov.—from the Upper Jurassic period. This specimen provides support for the widespread existence of membranous wings and the styliform element in the Scansoriopterygidae, as well as evidence for the diet of this enigmatic theropod clade. Our analyses show that marked changes in wing architecture evolved near the split between the Scansoriopterygidae and the avian lineage, as the two clades travelled along very different paths to becoming volant. The membranous wings supported by elongate forelimbs that are present in scansoriopterygids probably represent a short-lived experimentation with volant behaviour, and feathered wings were ultimately favoured during the later evolution of Paraves.
A newly described Jurassic scansoriopterygid reveals that membranous wings and the styliform element were widespread in this clade, which suggests that a distinctive wing architecture evolved near the split between the Scansoriopterygidae and the paravian lineages.
Journal Article
Rappy goes to Mars
When he takes a ride in a UFO to meet Janet, the head alien, Rappy must decide whether to live with her on Mars or return home.
Book
Mosaic evolution in an asymmetrically feathered troodontid dinosaur with transitional features
Asymmetrical feathers have been associated with flight capability but are also found in species that do not fly, and their appearance was a major event in feather evolution. Among non-avialan theropods, they are only known in microraptorine dromaeosaurids. Here we report a new troodontid,
Jianianhualong tengi
gen. et sp. nov., from the Lower Cretaceous Jehol Group of China, that has anatomical features that are transitional between long-armed basal troodontids and derived short-armed ones, shedding new light on troodontid character evolution. It indicates that troodontid feathering is similar to
Archaeopteryx
in having large arm and leg feathers as well as frond-like tail feathering, confirming that these feathering characteristics were widely present among basal paravians. Most significantly, the taxon has the earliest known asymmetrical troodontid feathers, suggesting that feather asymmetry was ancestral to Paraves. This taxon also displays a mosaic distribution of characters like
Sinusonasus
, another troodontid with transitional anatomical features.
Troodontids were theropod dinosaurs closely related to birds. Here, Xu and colleagues describe a new, feathered troodontid species,
Jianianhualong tengi
, dating from the Lower Cretaceous period in China that provides insight into troodontid mosaic evolution and paravian feathering.
Journal Article
Flying dinosaurs : how fearsome reptiles became birds
\"The discovery of stunning, feathered dinosaur fossils coming out of China since 2006 suggests that these creatures were much more bird-like than paleontologists previously imagined. Further evidence--bones, genetics, eggs, behavior, and more--has shown a seamless transition from fleet-footed carnivores to the ancestors of modern birds. Mixing colorful portraits with news on the latest fossil findings and interviews with leading paleontologists in the United States, China, Europe, and Australia, John Pickrell explains and details dinosaurs' development of flight.\"--Dust jacket flap.
Book
On the Size and Flight Diversity of Giant Pterosaurs, the Use of Birds as Pterosaur Analogues and Comments on Pterosaur Flightlessness
The size and flight mechanics of giant pterosaurs have received considerable research interest for the last century but are confused by conflicting interpretations of pterosaur biology and flight capabilities. Avian biomechanical parameters have often been applied to pterosaurs in such research but, due to considerable differences in avian and pterosaur anatomy, have lead to systematic errors interpreting pterosaur flight mechanics. Such assumptions have lead to assertions that giant pterosaurs were extremely lightweight to facilitate flight or, if more realistic masses are assumed, were flightless. Reappraisal of the proportions, scaling and morphology of giant pterosaur fossils suggests that bird and pterosaur wing structure, gross anatomy and launch kinematics are too different to be considered mechanically interchangeable. Conclusions assuming such interchangeability--including those indicating that giant pterosaurs were flightless--are found to be based on inaccurate and poorly supported assumptions of structural scaling and launch kinematics. Pterosaur bone strength and flap-gliding performance demonstrate that giant pterosaur anatomy was capable of generating sufficient lift and thrust for powered flight as well as resisting flight loading stresses. The retention of flight characteristics across giant pterosaur skeletons and their considerable robustness compared to similarly-massed terrestrial animals suggest that giant pterosaurs were not flightless. Moreover, the term 'giant pterosaur' includes at least two radically different forms with very distinct palaeoecological signatures and, accordingly, all but the most basic sweeping conclusions about giant pterosaur flight should be treated with caution. Reappraisal of giant pterosaur material also reveals that the size of the largest pterosaurs, previously suggested to have wingspans up to 13 m and masses up to 544 kg, have been overestimated. Scaling of fragmentary giant pterosaur remains have been misled by distorted fossils or used inappropriate scaling techniques, indicating that 10-11 m wingspans and masses of 200-250 kg are the most reliable upper estimates of known pterosaur size.
Journal Article