Four Wings Are Not Better Than Two

[rowyn]

Microraptors!

Why did all the really cool creatures have to go extinct? Curse you, natural selection! Curse YOOOOUUUUUU!

Comments

[level-head.livejournal.com]

You know, I instantly thought of the microraptor when I saw your title.

A trivia bit: The creature was featured in a cartoon -- one of the very earliest animations, called "Gertie the Dinosaur" in 1914 -- decades before we discovered that it actually had existed.

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Fr-Go/Gertie-the-Dinosaur.html

Here's a YouTube of the video, in fact. The Microraptor appears at about 4:25.


We now think that a great many dinosaurs had feathers; perhaps most of them. And of course, all the ones left alive do: we call them birds, now.

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

I gather there's a point where birds stop being dinosaurs and vice versa, but it's not clear to me where that point is. :)

But four wings! On a vertebrate! How cool is that?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Jyothky chants: "Four wings good! Two wings bad!"]