Four-winged dinosaurs from China

Xing Xu (), Zhonghe Zhou, Xiaolin Wang, Xuewen Kuang, Fucheng Zhang and Xiangke Du
Additional contact information
Xing Xu: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhonghe Zhou: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiaolin Wang: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xuewen Kuang: Tianjin Museum of Natural History
Fucheng Zhang: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiangke Du: People's Hospital, Beijing University

Nature, 2003, vol. 421, issue 6921, 335-340

Abstract: Abstract Although the dinosaurian hypothesis of bird origins is widely accepted, debate remains about how the ancestor of birds first learned to fly. Here we provide new evidence suggesting that basal dromaeosaurid dinosaurs were four-winged animals and probably could glide, representing an intermediate stage towards the active, flapping-flight stage. The new discovery conforms to the predictions of early hypotheses that proavians passed through a tetrapteryx stage.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01342 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:421:y:2003:i:6921:d:10.1038_nature01342

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature01342

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().