The first birds had four wings

The early evolutionary history of birds after their separation from dinosaurs continues to become more and more intriguing and entangled. The first perennials, inhabiting the Earth more than 100 million years ago, followed the principle "four is better than two" and have not one but two pairs of wings.

This is the result of a new study published in the journal Science. Researchers have found feather pores on 11 different fossils from ancient birds found in China. The feathers in question are straight and rigid and have formed an area of ​​sufficient space to have a tangible aerodynamic effect. The question of whether the rear wings were oblique, were used for planning, or had some other aerodynamic function (for example, for maneuvering) is highly debatable among paleontologists. This is not the first discovery of four-crowned "protoptics."

These are, for example, the anchoris and the micro-crawler, who with a high degree of probability have used their four wings to fly. The contribution of the new study is that the studied fossils belong to several different groups of early birds. This suggests that this characteristic (the presence of four wings) was widespread among the first feathers and reinforces the hypothesis that all modern birds come from four-winged ancestors.

Source: www.euroscientist.com , www.pixabay.com