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4-Winged Proto-Bird Unearthed In China; Predates Archaeopteryx

Posted by timothy on from the four-wings-perhaps-the-earliest-insult dept.

Wired reports on a find described September 24 in a note at Nature and the day after at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology: a dinosaur fossil bearing true feathers on four limbs. The fossil was discovered in northeastern China, in strata believed to have been deposited between 151 million and 161 million years ago. If that estimate is correct, the newly discovered Anchiornis huxleyi is at least one million years older than the believed age of the more famous winged dinosaur Archaeopteryx.

4 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. What's next? by flubba · · Score: 5, Funny

    8-Winged Meta-Bird?

    --
    riverrun, past Eve and Adamâ(TM)s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recircul
  2. PBS covered this... by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Informative

    like a year ago on Nova.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/program.html

    And from the documentary, it was obvious that the discovery had been made some time prior to the making of the show.

    So this is old news. I guess dinosaur news travels slowly.

  3. Gilette Mach 5 Uber-Bird by gardyloo · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Fuck it, we're going to five wings."

  4. Nutjobs out in force by T.E.D. · · Score: 5, Funny

    The really depressing thing is the article comments. It seems the Creationists found out about the article, and are pinging the bejeezus out of it in the comments.

    My personal favorite bit of ignorance starts like this:

    am nor a scientist or even an academic of any kind but as I understand it and please tell me if I am wrong but for a Theory to become fact it has to ...

    *raaaaaaaaz*! Thanks for playing.