NOVA: The Four-Winged Dinosaur

Microraptor might be the first known tree dweller, but even with four wings, could it fly?
The Four-Winged Dinosaur: Microraptors and the Bird Origin Debate is the DVD rendition of an episode from the public television series NOVA, detailing the discovery of and scientific experiments surrounding fossils of an amazing, recently discovered dinosaur species - microraptor, a small dinosaur with flight feathers on all four of its limbs! Microraptor might be the first known tree dweller, but even with four wings, could it fly? Or did it glide from treetop to treetop? How did it maneuver in the air with four wings? In search of answers, paleontologists conducted a number of wind tunnel experiments and carefully tabulated the data. The results offer insight into one of nature's greatest mysteries: how did winged flight really evolve? Featuring captivating computer imagery of how microraptor might once have looked and behaved in its native habitat, The Four-Winged Dinosaur is enthusiastically recommended not only for dinosaur lovers, but also for bird lovers of all ages and...

a missing link
Recently, the internet has an article on a deer that has one horn in the middle of its head. It's probably just a deformity, but it gets folks excited because it makes us think about unicorns. Well, here, viewers' imaginations get to go wild because scientists have found a dinosaur that had four wings.
This work does a great job in peeling the onion. It asks if this is proof that birds descended from dinosaurs. It questions whether this animal flew or glided. Were its feathered legs for flight, or insulation and breeding. The question comes up: did birds start flying from the ground up or were they in the trees and just adapted to traveling at a height?
The term "missing link" does eventually come up in the work. However, these fossils were preserved well because a volcano covered up every nearby living thing so well and the narrator never says, "like Pompeii." They show a fossil of a mammal and that really had me curious, as humans are in that group, but they just...

Please disband BAND
"The Four-Winged Dinosaur" is a Nova documentary about a bizarre fossil discovery in China. Come and meet the Microraptor, a four-winged dinosaur! Yes, really. Naturally, a creature of this kind is bound to create some chaos in the family tree. Reminds me of Homo florensiensis a.k.a. the Hobbit. This time, however, the problems are in the family tree of birds and paravian dinosaurs, including the "raptors" popularized by the movie "Jurassic Park".

The idea that birds are dinosaurs is, of course, immediately compelling - certainly in popular imagination - so the conflicts were bound to be rather fierce when scientists who deny the bird-dino connection tried to use Microraptor to their advantage. Those who do believe that birds are descended from dinosaurs immediately hit back. The documentary skilfully pits the two groups against each other, as they examine the fossil evidence, build models of how Microraptor might have looked like, and bicker in general.

Somehow,...

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