I am always interested in stories like this one about important discoveries, because we sometimes see existing hypotheses supported, or existing hypotheses falsified and I like watching how science and scientists react to the implications of the new discovery.
New species of bat-wing dinosaur discovered
quote:
More than 160 million years ago, the forests of ancient China were home to a bizarre predator: a tiny dinosaur that glided from tree to tree with leathery, bat-like wings. The newfound fossil, unveiled today in the journal Nature, is just the second feathered dinosaur found with signs of large membranes on its wings. Fitting, then, that the animal's newly assigned genus name is Ambopteryx: Latin for “both wings.”
quote:
Ambopteryx is now the best known fossil of a scansoriopterygid (scan-soary-OP-teh-rigid), an oddball group of nonavian dinosaurs that includes Yi qi, the first dinosaur ever found with bat-like wings. That fossil find”announced in 2015 by study coauthor Xing Xu, the IVPP's deputy director”reshaped how scientists understood the evolution of flight.
quote:
“Before the discovery of Yi qi, every flying dinosaur we found, we tried to fit on one evolutionary lineage toward birds,” says study coauthor Jingmai O'Connor, an IVPP paleontologist who specializes in ancient birds. “Yi qi really just shattered that idea.” (O'Connor also helped describe the first bird fossil found with an egg inside.)
quote:
Some researchers now think that flight arose at least four separate times within dinosaurs, including among scansoriopterygids. But healthy skepticism around Yi qi lingered. The animal has strange, rod-like bones called styliform elements that jut off its wrists, and paleontologists thought they might be there to help prop up a large wing membrane. But no other dinosaur, living or dead, also had such a bone”until Ambopteryx.
Links and Information please.
What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie
If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy
The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq