Decode the mystery of flying dinosaurs

A study published recently in Nature shows that many dinosaurs have the ability to fly, not just Archeopteryx, a feathered dinosaur that is still considered the ancestor of today's birds.

Although the scientific community now widely acknowledges that birds are descendants of dinosaurs, the way they evolved from terrifying predatory dinosaurs to peaceful pigeons remains a controversial research topic. argue.

Archeopteryx, the ancestor of today's bird

When Amy Balanoff, a paleontologist at Stony Brook University in New York, began studying the evolution of the dinosaur brain, she hoped to see a steady increase in size after receiving it. See that birds now have bigger brains than their ancestors.

But to prove this hypothesis, you need to have some dinosaur brains. We now have a lot of fossilized skulls, but how do we recreate their brains?

This scientist has found a solution, which is to use tomography technology to recreate what lies in the skull of the dinosaur. This allows the creation of a virtual mold of dinosaur brains.

Mrs. Balanoff and her colleagues snapped the dinosaur skulls and modern birds. They then use software to build their 3D brains and measure the volume of the brain and compare it to their body size.

Flying dinosaur brain is reproduced by tomography

In this study, Balanoff built the brain of Archeopteryx and its close relatives like deinonychosaurs and hopes to better understand the transformation of the brain when birds appear.

When analyzing the data, she found that brain size increased as these dinosaurs became more and more like birds. However, she was also surprised to find that the brains and larger fur are not unique characteristics of modern birds, and some of their ancestors also have these characteristics.

For example, Archeopteryx, bird ancestor, has a smaller brain than some dinosaurs that have distant relatives with birds like the deinonychosaurs.

Deinonychosaurs dinosaurs have wings like birds

Balanoff said that meant some ancestors of birds had basic flight skills, such as gliding from tree to tree.

"The larger brain means that they are neurotic in navigating in complex environments," she said.