2026-06-05T17:20:02Zhttps://riuma.uma.es/rest/oai/request

oai:riuma.uma.es:10630/326672026-02-03T11:12:05Zcom_10630_2254col_10630_37953

00925njm 22002777a 4500 dc Serrano Alarcón, Francisco José author Chiappe, Luis M. author 2021 Feathered dinosaurs discovered during the last decades have illuminated the transition from land to air in these animals, underscoring a significant degree of experimentation in wing-assisted locomotion around the origin of birds. Such evolutionary experimentation led to lineages achieving either wing-assisted running, four-winged gliding, or membrane-winged gliding. Birds are widely accepted as the only dinosaur lineage that achieved powered flight, a key innovation for their evolutionary success. However, in a recent paper in Current Biology, Pei and colleagues1 disputed this view. They concluded that three other lineages of paravian dinosaurs (those more closely related to birds than to oviraptorosaurs) — Unenlagiinae, Microraptorinae and Anchiornithinae — could have evolved powered flight independently. While we praise the detailed phylogenetic framework of Pei and colleagues1 and welcome a new attempt to understand the onset of flight in dinosaurs, we here expose a set of arguments that significantly weaken their evidence supporting a multiple origin of powered flight. Specifically, we maintain that the two proxies used by Pei and colleagues1 to assess powered flight potential in non-avian paravians — wing loading and specific lift — fail to discriminate between powered flight (thrust generated by flapping) and passive flight (gliding). Serrano and Chiappe (2021). Current Biology 31, R370-R372 https://hdl.handle.net/10630/32667 10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.058 Paleontología Aves - Vuelo Dinosaurios - Curiosidades Independent origins for powered flight in paravian dinosaurs?