Preserved footprints suggest non-avian dinosaurs used wings to run

Tiny footprints in South Korea symbolize the moment 120 million years ago when dinosaurs used their wings to make giant leaps across the ground, marking the earliest evidence that these extinct animals used wings to locomote. It is a trace of.

The creature was a bird of prey and was not part of the lineage that led to birds, but it is unclear whether it was fully capable of flight. But Alexander DeCecchi, of Dakota State University in South Dakota, says the evidence supports previous ideas that aerodynamics evolved multiple times over prehistoric railroad tracks.

“It’s pretty rare to find these kinds of (pre-flight) footprints, and to find them in animals that aren’t even birds. This is pretty special,” he says.

Velociraptors and other raptors (dromaeosaurids) are the ancestors of modern birds, but the lineage split into birds and nonavians, or “paraavians,” about 170 million years ago. Although paraavian dinosaurs had feathers and wings, they generally lacked the wingspan needed to offset their weight, said Michael Pittman, a research team member at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is said that

But Pittman, DeCecchi and colleagues believe that, based on upper body musculature, some paraavian dinosaurs may have been able to fly, or at least glide, before full flight evolved in birds. . Their suspicions grew stronger as they examined more than 2,600 rows of dinosaur footprints around the world.

A set of footprints discovered during the construction of a shopping center in southeastern South Korea shows surprisingly long gaps between steps created by a sparrow-sized bird of prey. Dromaeosauriformipes larus.

Taking into account their relative leg lengths, their stride length is three times longer than that of an ostrich and nearly twice that of a kangaroo rat. “It was a serendipitous moment, and I thought maybe I was doing something other than running,” Pittman said.

Further calculations and comparisons with the fossil anatomy showed that he was right. In other words, this animal could not have made such a forward movement using its legs alone. It was clearly flapping or gliding, perhaps during takeoff or landing, Pittman said.

“Most feathered dinosaurs probably did what this guy did, which is use their wings to run, jump, brake, and change direction,” Pittman said.

“In terms of wings and flight, this is a real mosaic of evolution,” says Romain Pintor of the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris. “It’s not a question of ‘you have it’ when ‘you don’t have it.’ To see how some traits evolved on their own path without becoming birds. We need to zoom out a little more.”