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First Flying Dinosaurs Had Biplane Structure
unchiujar writes to mention a BBC article about the design of the first flying dinosaurs. These possible early ancestors of avians apparently resembled biplanes in many ways, with legs hanging down in a fashion similar to WWI fighters. The researchers who made this discovery use this to argue the 'trees down' model of flight evolution, but the article points out this design may possibly be a failed evolutionary experiment. From the article: "Dr Chatterjee, from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, US, explained that two lines of evidence had led the team to this conclusion. Firstly, the researchers argue, dinosaurs and birds move their legs in a vertical plane, not sideways as the tandem flight pattern requires. Secondly, the feathers on Microraptor's hind legs are asymmetrical; one of the two vanes that extend either side of the shaft is narrower than the other. Aerodynamically, the narrow leading edge of these feathers should face forward in flight, against the direction of airflow. This would have given the flying reptiles lift. "
You'd think a flying spaghetti monster would have no trouble designing a flying thing...
I wonder if it might be better diagrammed with the bird using its legs in an "A" framed sort of way. Much like the V shaped stabilizers of the F117, only inverted. This would provide some lift, and stability in flight....
www.jmagar.com
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"Enough is enough! I've had it with this muthafuckin' snakes lookin' like muthafuckin' planes!"
I know several vertebrate paleontologists, and every time I hear them talk about this guy, the general impression I get is that he's kind of a crank. He's not, to put it mildly, well-respected in the vert paleo community, and his views on this are about as widely held as the view that Wensleydale cheese is the root taxon for frogs.
From July:
Ancient Reptile Had Wings Like a Fighter Jet
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
Just another inbred lizard.
Design flaw was the wings dropped off when it got a fright - which was when it first leapt from the trees. Ouch! Evolution pulls a nasty one!
Nothing witty
It's not like the bunch of quacks that drummed up the "intelligent design" theory invented the word "design." Using it doesn't make anyone religious.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Proof that intelligent deezine wins.
Presidenshully yours,
George W. Bush
And in fact, the ID folks specifically chose to use the words they did specifically to illicit responses just like yours. They hoped that they could use the choice of words to create confusion and hopefully trick people so they couldn't tell the difference between science and fairy tales.
Except it wasn't the first design for non-insect flying animals.
Pterosaurs preceeding flying dinosaurs by 75 million years. Pterosaurs were single winged and enormously successful.
Modern birds evolved from the first flying dinosaurs, not from Pterosaurs, although Pterosaurs and dinosaurs had a common ancestor.
There are 4 independant times flight evolved: Insects, pterosaurs, birds, and mammals. 4 different wing structures developed, and in the latter 3 cases, 3 different bone arrangments to support the wings.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Without flaming your question. I assume what your really meant was "How did they evolve".
Assume for a moment that feather like structures were already in nature. (Think hair or quills like porcupine)
Now, if you lived in the trees, like squirrels, it might be advantages to stay in the trees and avoid predators that walk along the ground. So to find food, you either climbed down quickly, and run to the next tree -or- you jump from tree to tree.
If you had feathers you could probably jump further, meaning you can reach trees that your less endowed friends couldn't. Making them the more likely target for said predators. So you breed and they become food for predators. So the offspring will have traits that promote far flying or gliding.
Lets see, 200000000 years of dinosaurs. Lets estimate an average lifespan of 10 years, lets also estimate 2 years of age is old enough to breed and that they lay 4 eggs every year. That's, err, a lot of tries. You do the math.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
Is it me or is dinosaur discovery actually dead?
I think it is you. I think most dinosaur paleontologists would say that this is a very exiting period. In the past two decades, the number of known dinosaur genera has skyrocketed and things like computer modeling and phylogenetic analysis have vastly increased our understanding of dinosaurs.
I have to think that most of the recent articles about these is to try to revitalize interest in the field but the simple fact is archeologists arn't that interesting.
Points:
1. Please don't mutilate the English language.
2. I think you mean paleontologists, not archaeologists.
3. Just because you don't find it interesting, doesn't mean other people can't find it interesting.
They'll try to make up some interesting stuff about them but seriously, now you're saying 150 years of evidence is wrong because the first flying dinosaur was a biplane?
No one is making stuff up, and no one is saying that 150 years of evidence is wrong. Microraptor does not contradict any modern theories about dinosaurs.
Either the guys now are just making stuff up, or the guys before them were making stuff up, either way something about that pisses me off.
Modifying theories, and sometimes totally discarding them, in order to fit the evidence and to be able to make better predictions is how science works.
Hmm, I have a feeling that I'm responding to a troll, but that's ok, I felt like writing about dinosaurs anyway.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
It's probably a good thing the elder things' wing experiments had only limited success. On one hand, we might be able to fly, but on the other hand: flying shoggoths!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This story reminds me of a Little Ceaser's commercial from maybe 1988.
Guy: So what am I gonna do with this pizza box?
Clerk: You ever hear of origami?
Clerk frenetically folds pizza box.
Clerk: It's a pterodactyl.
Clerk runs with origami pterodactyl
Is how these dinosaurs managed to fire their machineguns through their propellers without shooting off the prop?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
So, basically what you're saying is that you have a hard time understanding things that aren't movies, and you get frustrated and angry as a result, but blame the thing you don't understand.
Sounds like a personal problem.
The enemies of Democracy are
See, the bible really can be used as a care repair guide.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
Not hardly. A biplane has no more lift-generating capability than a monoplane of the same total area...in fact less, because of interference between the two wings. The primary reason for a biplane is that by adding a few struts and wires, you can easily make a lightweight structure strong enough to carry heavy loads -- and you can do it with simple manufacturing techniques.
A secondary advantage is that a biplane has less overall wingspan than the equivalent monoplane. That means a lower polar moment of inertia in the roll axis which improves maneuverability.
The main disadvantage is that all those struts and wires hanging out in the breeze create something called intersection drag, which goes up rapidly as the airspeed increases. Yes, biplanes generally fly slowly -- because they have to, not because they can.
rj
why can't we identify a currently living transitionary animal to a currently existing "latest and greatest" evolved creature?
EVERY population is "transitionary." Evolution occurs in populations, not individuals. Successful genes propagate through populations and unsuccessful ones are weeded out. Over time that genetic drift combined with division into subpopulations produces sufficient variances that we then see them in the fossil record as distinct. Fossil remains are rare, so what we have is a sparse sampling of what has lived. However, there are cases where in layer after layer the shifts in a population can be seen. The reptile-to-mammal transition for example, has lots of fossil examples of the incremental variations of populations over an extended period.
But really-- read a book. This is not rocket science, and popular books on evolutionary details are not hard to read. Asking a question like "how come there are no transitions" merely shows how ignorant you truly are about the subject. The question itself is erroneous as it presumes ridiculous things like a reptile suddenly giving birth to a half-bird or something which has nothing to do with how evolution works. Trotting out dated creationist canards does not speak well for your education. If you wish to argue against evolution, find out what it is first before you start asking "how long have you been beating your wife"-type questions.
The language isn't mechanically unjustifiable: a jaguar's morphogenesis stems from its genetic blueprint, and within its population that blueprint has changed through the process of evolution. In other words, an individual jaguar undergoes a process of being "made"-- starting with conception; on the species level a jaguar is also "made" via evolution. Ultimately when you see it in action, you say "it was made for the water." meaning, remarkably well-suited to the water.
The language is also justifiable for practical reasons: information wants to be anthromorphisized. Especially in a documentary, like you're talking about. Zoology documentaries are made for mass appeal, and so we can marvel at the (generally amazing) form and function of the zoological life that share the planet with us.
"inexact" speech doesn't appear in reputable textbooks and won't feature prominently in a technical conversation with a biologist if the topic is design and motivation. Casually (or excitedly) describing something within a documentary is totally different than pronouncing or formulating a definition or denotation (in which case possible misconstruals or implications would be more avoided).
Evolution is a "designer" in an abstract sense. We're human beings and we prefer to talk about things in figurative ways.
Giraffes & peacocks arise over timescales beyond our casual comprehension because of the mutability of genetic make-up across the generations, the divergence of populations, and physical environments that lend advantages and disadvantages to various biological forms. They don't just poof into existence, they have a dizzying set of ancestors and relatives like a lot of other animals, which are well detailed in the archeological record. Additionally the flashiness of peacocks is a common (but variably implemented) feature in the animal kingdom. As an interesting tangent about giraffes: the "eating food that's higher on trees" is a joke that was evidently originally created to deride darwinism rather than make sense of it, even though it still gets popularly cited as fact; a different and more empirical 'story' for the notable feature of giraffes-- long necks-- is that male giraffes are often observed to fight, by swinging their necks, even accomplishing killing blows, and the longer your neck the more tremendous your leverage. Within a small population the elimination of (shorter necked) male competitors would provide a huge boon to the representation of a long-necked giraffe in the local gene pool in subsequent generations. I'm no expert though and i've only heard this second hand.
Engage a credible biologist in a discussion-- or in publication-- instead of watching them in a documentary and you'll probably see a different presentation. All the same, "Design" (noun) commonly means "form", not "[Thing] That Was Made By Omnipotent Creator", and doesn't connote conscious intention. Drawing the inference that someone who uses the word "design" is making a theological claim and therefore isn't a "strict evolutionist" is absurd.