Which dinos could fly?

POWERED FLIGHT IS THE ABILITY TO USE muscles to flap your wings and generate lift. The ancestors of modern birds weren’t the only ones to achieve this feat – other groups of dinosaurs also found weird and wonderful ways to stay aloft. One species that might have flown is Yi qi (‘strange wing’), whose bizarre aerofoils resembled those of bats. While the surface of a bat’s wings feature a membrane of skin (patagium) stretched across its legs and elongated fingers, Yi qi’s membranous wings were supported by its arms and a ‘styliform’ wrist bone unique to the scansoriopterygid dinosaur family. The aerodynamic potential of Yi qi hasn’t been tested, however, and so it may have been a mere glider. Microraptor (‘tiny thief’) is a dinosaur that was certainly capable of…

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Bbc Wildlife (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2024

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