From the clutches of dinosaurs to the wings of birds

2009/06/18 Kortabitarte Egiguren, Irati - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Eboluzioa
• Paleontologia
• Arkeologia

Although the theory that birds come from dinosaurs is accepted, there are still things to be clarified.

In the development of embryos of birds it is observed that the wings come from the fusion of the second, third and fourth fingers. Teropod dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus or Velociraptor, also had three fingers, but paleontologists considered them the first, second and third fingers. In fact, in the fossils of the most primitive teropod dinosaurs were developed the first three, with remnants of the fourth and fifth fingers.

But now, researchers from the Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of Beijing Vertebrates and the George Washington University of the US have analysed the fossils of the Limusaurus inextricabilis dinosaur. And they have seen, on the one hand, that the first finger is very short and, on the other, that the second finger's metacarp coincides with the supposedly first finger in the rest of terophopos. Therefore, according to these results, it seems that in the teropods can also be the second, third and fourth fingers developed. In this way you can understand much more easily the way of the fingers of the dinosaurs to the wings of the birds.

Image: Image: James Clark