Evolution: Taking Wing with Weak Feathers

نویسنده

  • Xing Xu
چکیده

Scientists long thought they knew what the wings of early birds looked like. But new reconstructions of Archaeopteryx and its kin suggest quite different feather arrangements on their wings with profound implications for the evolution of flight.

برای دانلود رایگان متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Primitive Wing Feather Arrangement in Archaeopteryx lithographica and Anchiornis huxleyi

In modern birds (Neornithes), the wing is composed of a layer of long, asymmetrical flight feathers overlain by short covert feathers. It has generally been assumed that wing feathers in the Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx and Cretaceous feathered dinosaurs had the same arrangement. Here, we redescribe the wings of the archaic bird Archaeopteryx lithographica and the dinosaur Anchiornis huxleyi and...

متن کامل

Hovering hummingbird wing aerodynamics during the annual cycle. II. Implications of wing feather moult

Birds usually moult their feathers in a particular sequence which may incur aerodynamic, physiological and behavioural implications. Among birds, hummingbirds are unique species in their sustained hovering flight. Because hummingbirds frequently hover-feed, they must maintain sufficiently high flight capacities even when moulting their flight feathers. A hummingbird wing consists of 10 primary ...

متن کامل

Aeroelastic flutter of feathers, flight and the evolution of non-vocal communication in birds.

Tonal, non-vocal sounds are widespread in both ordinary bird flight and communication displays. We hypothesized these sounds are attributable to an aerodynamic mechanism intrinsic to flight feathers: aeroelastic flutter. Individual wing and tail feathers from 35 taxa (from 13 families) that produce tonal flight sounds were tested in a wind tunnel. In the wind tunnel, all of these feathers could...

متن کامل

Resonating feathers produce courtship song.

Male Club-winged Manakins, Machaeropterus deliciosus (Aves: Pipridae), produce a sustained tonal sound with specialized wing feathers. The fundamental frequency of the sound produced in nature is approximately 1500 Hz and is hypothesized to result from excitation of resonance in the feathers' hypertrophied shafts. We used laser Doppler vibrometry to determine the resonant properties of male Clu...

متن کامل

Soft-tissue and dermal arrangement in the wing of an Early Cretaceous bird: Implications for the evolution of avian flight

Despite a wealth of fossils of Mesozoic birds revealing evidence of plumage and other soft-tissue structures, the epidermal and dermal anatomy of their wing's patagia remain largely unknown. We describe a distal forelimb of an enantiornithine bird from the Lower Cretaceous limestones of Las Hoyas, Spain, which reveals the overall morphology of the integument of the wing and other connective str...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Current Biology

دوره 22  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2012