Fossil flew like biplane, according to an article in BBC News, 22 Jan 2007. Fossil researchers Sankar Chatterjee and Jack Templin have studied a fossil nameMicroraptor gui and concluded that it flew like a World War 1 biplane. This fossil is a small dinosaur-like creature whose forelimbs and hind limbs were surrounded by feather-like imprints. Scientists suggested that it glided with its limbs spread out in tandem like the four wings of a dragonfly. Chatterjee and Templin claim that the creature held its hind limbs below its body so that the “wings” were positioned one above the other like early aircraft. Their evidence for this model is that both dinosaur and bird hip joints move in a vertical plane, rather than a horizontal one, and that the feathers appear to be asymmetrical. For these to function aerodynamically the narrow side should face forward, as it would if the legs were held under the body. Chatterjee commented to the BBC that there were striking parallels between bird flight and the development of aircraft. “We see that the Wright brothers came up with a design for which there was no precedent in nature at the time. This shows us that if there is a problem in engineering, sometimes there are only one or two possible solutions.”
Editorial Comment: If there is a “problem in engineering” it takes an engineer with a creative mind to solve it. If this creature did glide like a biplane, it didn’t get that way by chance random processes, any more than the Wright brothers’ aircraft evolved by chance. Otherwise, half evolved Microraptors would have fallen out of the sky, just like many of less well designed aircraft that preceded the Wright brothers. Flying is something you have get right first time, or you don’t get a chance to breed or evolve. (Ref. engineering aeronautics, aviation)
Evidence News 24 April 2007