A New Origin of Flight: Norellraptor barsboldi

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Xuri Wang et al, Independent assembly of the flight apparatus in a non-avian dinosaur clade, Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-77804-6

Until this moment, there have been 3 confirmed origins of vertebrate flight: pterosaurs, dinosaurs/birds, and bats. While many paleontologists have suspected additional origins within dinosaurs, it was looking like flight features were being passed down from a common ancestor. Thanks to a new microraptor relative, Norellraptor barsboldi, paleontologist may now have solid evidence for a second origin of flight within dinosaurs! Well this is extremely exciting news more research will need to be done to confirm exactly where these flight features came from and how many times they arose in the dinosaur family tree.

Episode 351

Notes:

Holy crap, so I know I say everything's big news, but this is really big news. We might have another origin of vertebrate flight. So, in case you don't know, until this moment, there were three origins of flight in vertebrates. You have birds, bats, pterosaurs. There've been a couple suspected origins within dinosaurs like the microraptor relatives. Now, you know what microraptor is, but in case you forgot, it gets called a four-winged velociraptor a lot of the time. It's not a velociraptor, but it does have four wings. Or technically, it has flight feathers on both its forelimbs and its hind limbs. Exactly how well it could fly or glide is being constantly debated. It's also worth noting that not all of its immediate relatives have four wings, but it is a feature that is so cool you can't not talk about it. Especially because microraptor itself is like a four-winged half velociraptor half crow, and there's no combination of those things that isn't pure awesome. Anyway, like I was saying, microraptorine dinosaurs are very close relatives of avian dinosaurs or modern birds. And they share a bunch of features associated with flight. So, there's always been this question about did they come from a common ancestor or did these flight features evolve separately in these two groups? And thanks to a brand new species, there are some hints. Meet Norellraptor barsboldi, the newly named microraptorine dinosaur from Cretaceous China. And aside from this nearly 2-ft specimen being pretty much complete, the level of detail is insane. And because of this level of detail, paleontologists were able to take a close look at not only Nuralagus raptor, but also other microraptorine dinosaurs and compare them to the rest of their family tree. And they found that they share about 30% of their flight features with avians or true birds. But it looks like these features showed up in a different order in the different groups, which according to paleontologists indicates that they evolved separately and that these features didn't come from a common ancestor, which means we potentially now have four origins of flight in vertebrates. Bats, pterosaurs, birds, and the microraptor relatives. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.