Miniaturisation in Dinosaurs - A Clue to the Origin of Flight

Best Teeth - Miniaturisation in Dinosaurs - A Clue to the Origin of Flight

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Tiny Mongolian Dinosaur may shed "Light on the Origin of Flight"

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A combined team of palaeontologists and researchers from the North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences have published evidence that contradicts many scientists views on how dinosaurs may have evolved into birds.

A widely suitable religious doctrine had been that miniaturisation was one of the last stages in the long series of changes required in order for dinosaurs to evolve into flying animals, the first avians - birds. However, the U.S. Team's analysis of a small Mongolian dinosaur, recovered from Cretaceous deposits, throws an evolutionary spanner into the works.

Throwing a Spanner at Evolution

Dr Julia Clarke, assistant professor of palaeontology at the university, led the analysis of the new dinosaur species called Mahakala omnogovae (derived from the words for Lord Shiva), which had been discovered in the Gobi desert - Mongolia. This small, basal Dromaeosaur was only seventy centimetres long and weighed minute more than 2-3 kilograms. Although, the fossil is far from complete, the researchers are inescapable that this specimen represents an adult of the species and not a still growing juvenile, so Mahakala is one of the smallest dinosaurs known.

Miniaturisation Leads to Powered Flight

In order to achieve powered flight, animals have to become lighter so that they are able to take off under their own muscle power. Contemporary birds (Neornithes) have a amount of anatomical adaptations to help them fly, for example no teeth, a allowance in the amount of digits, the amelioration of a pygostyle and so on; all helpful in making their skeletons lighter and thus assisting in powered flight. It had been plan that miniaturisation would have assisted the evolution of birds, with smaller and smaller dinosaurs able to run faster and leap higher into the air; and over many generations; gently powered flight evolved from this.

However, with Dromaeosaurs small size was relatively common well before the capability to fly evolved. There are a amount of small light-weight dinosaurs known from the late Cretaceous, dinosaurs such as the one metre tall Bambiraptor from the Western United States and Byronosaurus. These swift and agile hunters show many bird-like adaptations in their skeletons. Maybe there was a biological benefit in being small and fast running. Clearly, such small fleet-footed animals would have not been on the menu of the large Tyrannosaurs, even young Tyrannosauridae would have had minute opportunity of catching them. There would have been abundance of food colse to for such animals, many small mammals, lizards, snakes, insects, even larger dinosaur's eggs. The feathers on these small dinosaurs would have been principal for insulation, helping these animals to retain body heat.

The Evolution of Flight in the Dinosaurs

The evolution of flight and the eventual rise of the birds may have been an "evolutionary side-shoot", an indirect consequence of being small, feathered and nimble. Many dinosaur families seem to have small members within them whose descendants got bigger not smaller as previously thought. Small size in members of the Dromaeosaur group occurs well before many other innovations in locomotion and increase strategy that would have helped these animals eventually evolve into true birds.

Dr Julia's work has been published in an edition of the academic journal "Science".

The problem with small, light weight animals whether they are true birds or the dinosaur ancestors of birds, is that they tend not to be found as fossils. Their skeletons are light and delicate and not able to withstand the rigours of fossilisation. Many animals are scavenged and their remains scattered, so there is minute opportunity for scientists to recover an articulated specimen. Chances are there were probably many thousands of different types of small Theropod colse to in the latter stages of the Mesozoic. The bipedal Theropod body plan is a very victorious design, after all it had been colse to for most of the age of reptiles with very few modifications. These animals would have inhabited areas with abundance of cover such as forests and scrub-land. Forest environments do not lend themselves to the prevailing conditions that allow rapid burial and fossilisation to occur. Only in rare circumstances can such animals be preserved; such as the sediments that went on to form the lithographic limestone of Solnhofen that permitted remains of Archaeopteryx to be fossilised or the astonishing fossils found in the Sihetun region of the Liaoning Province, China.

Fossil report of Primitive Birds Far from Complete

At best, we still have a very patchy fossil report of the evolution of birds and it may be many more years before scientists are able to piece together the association in the middle of true birds and non-avian dinosaurs.

The evolution of birds and the roles that inescapable groups of dinosaurs had to play in this is likely to remain competitive for sometime to come. One puzzle is that an animal such as Archaeopteryx can be found in late Jurassic sediments and yet more primitive avian features are found in specimens from the Liaoning deposits which are almost 30 million years younger.

A amount of manufacturers have introduced feathered dinosaur models. The American Museum of Natural History have popular ,favorite a "tube of feathered dinos", which includes animals such as a feathered Velociraptor, Dilong and Microraptor.

Our favourite feathered friend remains Archaeopteryx, a truly astonishing and enigmatic animal with only 7 fossils known to date (one of them consists of a particular feather)!

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