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Dimorphodon plots with soaring birds for some reas by Inmyarmsinmyarms, literature

Literature

Dimorphodon plots with soaring birds for some reas

A recent-ish paper (seriously, it came out right after my birthday and I'm so sorry for not having covered it until now) showcases that we have still a lot to learn about pterosaur wing shapes. Case in point, Dimorphodon, which by all means was a robust animal and a poor flyer, plots with dynamic soaring birds like albatrosses in the data. Pterosaurs traditionally have been interpreted as having less variety in wing shapes due to possessing a sole wing finger as opposed to the multiple ones of bats or the wing feathers of birds. But as the study showcases, pterosaurs had vastly varied wing shapes that plot oddly compared to modern flyers, and so odd results like soaring Dimorphodon occur. It is a quite somber reminder we know very little of prehistoric biomechanics, even in a group as studied as pterosaurs.

What if birds were originally bats? by Inmyarmsinmyarms, literature

Literature

What if birds were originally bats?

It’s been a while since I talked about flight in dinosaurs, and discussions on it go increasingly polarizing on whereas it was developed once and lost multiple times or if birds are just one product of many flight developments. I myself find easily swooned by either argument, so here’s something less controversial. In Modelling the Flying Bird, C.J. Pennycuick proposes that the patagia seen in modern birds are the remnants of a full bat-like wing that degenerated over time. This would make the ancestral flying dinosaurs more in line with other flying and gliding vertebrates that usually start with patagia, only to be an unique case where the patagia is replaced by another airfoil. This hypothesis is perhaps vindicated in the discovery of membranous winged scansoriopterygids, which depending on the study are either basal avialans, basal oviraptorosaurs or ancestral maniraptors, putting them in a basal position in relation to dinosaurs with feathered wings. We now know Caudipteryx is