How Did The Huge Dinosaurs Turn Into Light Birds?

A branch of Dinosaurs turned into birds, which is a conclusion recognized by the world scientific community. But under this big framework, there is a question that has always plagued paleontologists: How can a huge dinosaur turn into a light bird? How do they learn to fly?

If there is a problem, someone has to solve it. This is exactly what we scientists do. In the past few decades, scientists have put forward many hypotheses, but no matter what, to answer these questions, we must first find fossil evidence, and a large part of our work is to find Dinosaur Fossils.

For those engaged in paleontology, we know through geological maps which areas of the earth's surface may have which types of fossils. Most of the time, in the no man’s land of the Gobi Desert, our daily work is very simple. We go out in the morning and look for the target rock with our eyes open. We may walk 10 kilometers or 20 kilometers a day. This long search is the most important thing for us to find fossils. A step of. If we are lucky to find a fossil, we will collect the fossil and transport it back to the laboratory.

We know that the most critical process for a dinosaur to become a bird is to evolve wings. The most important structure of bird wings today is feathers. It is difficult to preserve the structure of feathers in mudstone and sandstone, so we need to find fossils in another place. In Liaoning, there are many mountains that are not very high, but if you take a closer look, you will find that a special kind of rock in the mountains is shale, which is very helpful for preserving the traces of soft tissue like feathers. In the past few years, scientists have discovered many interesting fossils in western Liaoning and surrounding areas.

Dinosaurs

One of the key changes in the transformation of huge dinosaurs into birds is that their bodies must have become smaller. The newly discovered little dinosaur weighed only three to four hundred grams, which was small enough to fly into the sky. However, this dinosaur had very thick feathers on its hind legs. What do these thick feathers mean?

We found that all animals that can fly, except birds, will extend all the parts of their bodies to help them fly. For example, we are familiar with bats. The wings of bats are not only on the front limbs like birds, but also extend to the hind limbs. We call it the four-wing state. A scholar once suggested that perhaps birds were not the first to be such an exception. Their ancestors also went through a four-winged state, but such fossils have never been discovered.

Based on this specimen, we propose that this dinosaur probably represents a missing link in evolution, called a Four-Winged Dinosaur. Its front and rear limbs form aerodynamic surfaces to help it fly into the blue sky.

To prove this, we must look for more fossil evidence. As a result, we discovered a series of other dinosaur fossils with feathers and four wings. We also found that huge feathers were also present in early birds, indicating that early birds had 4 wings just like dinosaurs.

Combining all the evidence, we will find that the early dinosaurs lived on the ground, slowly climbed up trees, and then evolved 4 wings. As its flying ability became stronger and stronger, its front wings became more developed and its hind limbs became more developed. His wings degenerated, and became the familiar bird we are today, flying with only two wings.