It is an extremely unknown fact that many dinosaurs and other reptiles possessed feathers to regulate their body temperature because they were all cold-blooded. However, recent discoveries show that early birds had large legs similar to an ostrich, but their legs did not have tiny feathers, rather they were covered in long feathers that appeared to have been used for flight. “A bizzare hind wing formed by a large pennaceous feathers (feathers with stiff vanes) along with the metasaurs is known in several non-avian dinosaurs and may have played an important role in the evolution of flight on the line to birds" (Zheng).
Fossils of early birds with strange feathered hindlimbs were discovered and point to the fact that early birds may have had a similar body structure to a biplane, an airplane with two sets of wings, and upper and a lower. Then, as evolution proceeded, the hindlimbs of birds shrank and lost their feathers. And their forelimbs grew larder and grew longer and more efficient feathers. Now the only feathers on the hindlimbs of modern birds are tiny and fluffy and used only for insulation purposes.
The use of hindlimbs during flight was most likely much easier to accomplish than flying like today's birds. Without the use of their hindlimbs, it it likely that birds never would have been able to leave the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment