Was it a biplane dinosaur?

About a 125 million-year-old fossil discovered in China in recent years, American astronomers say it may have been a “flying dinosaur” flying like a 20th-century double-wing aircraft Was The winged bird in question, dubbed the “Microraptor GUI”, was only 77 centimeters (just over two and a half feet) long from its beak to the tip of its long tail.

biplane-dinosaur-long-tailHowever, the strange structure of its legs indicates that the bird of prey kept its claws together at all times. In addition, these claws also had feathers on the left and right sides. Shankar Chatterjee, a mathematician at the Texas University of Technology in Lubbock, USA, says that in order to be able to fly with such a structure, it is necessary for the bird to fly like a biplane.

But another archaeologist, Gregory Paul, disagrees. He says Chatterjee has hastily made a biplane hypothesis, although he should have searched for more fossils of the bird to reach a final conclusion.

Ref: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences