Appel 43.1 - Micro

MICRORAPTOR
THE FOUR WINGED PREDATOR
DOOR DANIQUE WETSTEIJN
While many of the topics in this edition are
about very, very small things, this article will address a very, very old
thing. It’s dinosaur time! And although dinosaurs couldn’t really be
categorized to be small, one of them has a really convenient name:
The Microraptor. This ancient creature is very interesting to tell about
regarding history, evolution, but also aerodynamics. And fortunately
it’s also small!
When we are talking of dinosaurs the first thing coming to mind are:
The T-rex, the velociraptor, the stegosaurus or any other of those gigantic
reptiles walking around in Jurassic Park. But the microraptor
is more comparable to a large bird, like an owl or an eagle. But with a
very long tail, feathers over its complete body and four wings. Scientists
have estimated the length of a full grown microraptor to be 70 - 120 cm,
a height of at least 40 cm and weighing 1 kg. In 2012 research has been
done with the pigment cells in a new specimen. The structure of the
cells was found to be similar to that of the starling, a bird really common
to find in the Netherlands. Like the starling, the microraptor had a
blue metallic color that reflected light beautifully.
Something that a lot of people don’t know is that all birds we know nowadays
have a direct line to dinosaurs. Birds and dinosaurs have many
similarities. Their digestive system makes use of gastroliths, their bone
structure is hollow and include many pneumatic bones, they build
nests, lay eggs and brood them. Actually, that makes sense, doesn’t it?
We know several land dinosaurs that had feathers around their heads,
their legs or were even completely covered in it. And if you ever have
seen a plucked chicken, you know it’s basically a Tyrannosaurus Rex
that lost his deep voice after a rough night of partying …
That the microraptor was a predator and creative hunter has been proven
several times in the past 10 years. Besides the obvious claws that
were discovered in well preserved fossils, its gut contents told us even
more. Not only did the microraptor eat small mammal-like animals that
lived around trees, also smaller birds were swallowed whole and fish
couldn’t escape this dinosaur bird either. This suggests that the microraptor
did not only live amongst trees, but also close to lakes and seas.
Let us pay some attention to the fact that the microraptor has four wings
instead of only two. The microraptor is a special kind of avian dinosaur,
as it is an important historical link that strongly supports the fourwinged
stage of bird-evolution. Although it may be hard to imagine for
us right now, having four wings was trending topic in the dinosaur era.
There are multiple classes of bird-like dinosaurs with feathers attached
to the arm limbs and the leg limbs, resulting in four wings. But only the
microraptor family was discovered to be able to actually use the ‘leg
wings’ for flying or gliding purposes. As it was able to arrange its leg
limbs much alike a flying squirrel while gliding. This was determined
after carefully studying the hip bone structure. Moreover, the feathers
attached to the leg limbs of the microraptor were much longer and had
higher structural stiffness than on other dinosaur birds, creating four
12 DE APPEL