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Re: four winged Archaeopteryx



Actually, it would be interesting to compare the total weight, drag and lift 
of the tails of the biggest tailed modern birds than can achieve flapping 
flight to Archaeopteryx. The bony tail of Archaeopteryx was not really heavy, 
it 
was a small minority of total mass. Even so it may have been less 
aerodynamically efficient than that of a similar sized tail of a modern bird, 
but that is 
to be expected in a basal flier. 

We may never know whether the tail of Archaeopteryx was used to generate 
lift. That depends upon whether Arch was tail heavy or not, and that depends 
upon 
the relationship between the axis of wing lift and the center or gravity, and 
that depends upon the distribution of body mass which is not reliably 
reconstructable, and also upon the fore versus aft sweep of the wings which we 
cannot 
determine because it depended upon the unknowable question of how the beast 
held its wings. 

GSPaul