Ancient birds once had four wings

The bird used to have four wings, but the Creator had removed their wings for some reason.

In 2003, some Chinese scientists discovered fossils of 6 flying dinosaurs. These dinosaurs have two wings in the body and two wings on the legs, Newscientist reports. They call them Microraptor.

"Ten years ago, when we published this discovery, some people suspected that fossils were fakes. After that, many fossil dinosaur fossils continued to show up, but research men still do not dare to assert whether they are ancestors of modern birds or not, they even predict they become extinct before evolving into birds today, " Xing Xu, a scientist from Linyi University, Shandong Province, China. - stated.

Illustration of an ancient bird with two wings in its body and two wings in its legs. (Photo: wired.com)

Now Xu and colleagues are studying other four-wing dinosaur fossils to reinforce their judgment. In the Tianyu Nature Museum in Shandong Province, they found nearly 2,000 fossils of the first birds on earth. They were excavated 10 to 15 years ago. Among them, they found 11 big feather fossils on their hind legs.

"It is possible that the function of the feathers is to help the bird fly, not to show off the beauty of the body," Xu said.

The date of the 11 fossils is about 120 million years. They are members of many ancient bird families.

Many paleontologists doubt Xu's conclusions. Kevin Padian - a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, USA - acknowledged the importance of discovery, but he did not think the feathers in the pair of ancient bird hind legs were wings.

"Unfortunately, we cannot prove the function of the feathers on their hind legs with aerodynamic tests," he commented.