Re: Archaeopteryx not the first bird, is the earliest known (powered) flying dinosaur

[GSP1954@aol.com]

I just penciled out a detailed restoration of the skeleton on the type 
Microraptor gui (which I suspect is the same as the type species unless the two 
are 
from different stratigraphic levels). The restoration is quite accurate 
because everything is preserved in this and other microraptor specimens, even 
the 
sternal rib lengthes are known. Also added the for and aft wing feathers, based 
both on photos and the measurements included in the Nature description. 

Both sets of wings are very large, the hindwing is at least as large as the 
fore, and the chord of both is constant and broad along the entire span. There 
is no justification for the narrow inner wings restored on the initial 
protoglider restorations. The forewing alone has an area/total mass ratio that 
falls 
in the middle of the avian range and is similar to that of Archaeopteryx, the 
hindwing halves the wing loading of course. The leg wing is so well developed 
that suggestions it was not frequently fully deployed as an airfoil are not 
credible (it would be a plausible display device only if there were no highly 
asymmetrical feathers), There is no viable means to deploy any part of the leg 
feathers with the legs even partly folded (all such suggested arrangements are 
awkward and contrived at best, if not anatomically improbable). 

The humerus is very robust and strong, with large muscle attachment areas. So 
the arm wings alone are too large, strong and well muscled to be just for 
gliding. Nor does gliding explain the evolution of advanced flight features of 
the sort found in flying dromaeosaurs not present in Archaeopteryx. Gliders are 
passive aerialists and do not need to updgrade their flight apparatus beyond 
the limits seen in modern exampels, none of which is as well adapted for flight 
as Archaeopteryx much less dromaeosaurs. Basal dromaeosaurs were arm powered 
fliers of some sort, with the leg wing acting as some sort of nonflapping 
airfoil. Whether their flight will ever be well understood is open to question, 
since their flight apparatus was so radically different from anything present 
today. 

The notion that the flightless dromaeosaurs of the Cretaceous were not 
neoflightless descendents of flying dromaeosaurs more advanced than 
Archaeopteryx is 
highly illogical since, as I explained in detail in DA, they possess a host 
of flight characters more derived than those of Archaeopteryx (and similar to 
those found in modern flightless birds). 

G Paul