Wilbur and Orville, Right.

Tired, but really fascinating article from Scientific American about a new theory on dinosaur (or microraptor at least) flight. From the article:

On parts of the creature's arms and legs, the discoverers observed a series of long asymmetric feathers, with one side of the feather narrower than the other. In modern birds such asymmetry is considered a hallmark of aerodynamic function—like the asymmetry of an airplane wing. Based on the orientation of the feathered remains, the group imagined the dinosaur flying spread-eagled, with wings trailing from each limb.

Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and his colleague, retired aeronautical engineer R. Jack Templin of Ottawa, Ontario, take issue with the reconstruction in a paper published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. "We realized there's something wrong in the anatomy because no dinosaurs could splay their legs sideways," Chatterjee says. "No birds can do that."

Chatterjee and Templin instead envisioned Microraptor's legs tucked under its body, with its rear feathers parallel to and beneath the feathers on its outspread arms. "It's a very common posture in living raptors," such as when holding prey, Chatterjee says. That's also a more realistic position, they say, because it puts the leading, narrower edges of the leg feathers forward against the direction of airflow, like the arm feathers. The spread-eagled wing plan had the feathers in clashing orientations, they note.

So tongiht when you drift off to sleep, instead of picturing raptors soaring through the air spread eagle, picture dozens of carnivorous, feathered biplanes swooping and soaring above Cretaceous Earth.

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