PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

New evidence of dinosaurs' role in the evolution of bird flight

2012-11-21
(Press-News.org) Academics at the Universities of Bristol, Yale and Calgary have shown that prehistoric birds had a much more primitive version of the wings we see today, with rigid layers of feathers acting as simple airfoils for gliding.

Close examination of the earliest theropod dinosaurs suggests that feathers were initially developed for insulation, arranged in multiple layers to preserve heat, before their shape evolved for display and camouflage.

As evolution changed the configuration of the feathers, their important role in the aerodynamics and mechanics of flight became more apparent. Natural selection over millions of years ultimately modified dinosaurs' forelimbs into highly-efficient, feathered wings that could rapidly change its span, shape and area – a key innovation that allowed dinosaurs to rule the skies.

This basic wing configuration has remained more or less the same for the past 130 million years, with bird wings having a layer of long, asymmetrical flight feathers with short covert feathers on top. They are able to separate and rotate these flight feathers to gain height, change direction and even hover.

This formation allows birds to move in such a way as to produce both lift and thrust simultaneously – a capability that man, with the help of technology, is still trying to successfully imitate.

The research, published today [21 November] in Current Biology, looked at the dinosaur Anchiornis huxleyi and the Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx lithographica. The latter is 155 million years old and widely considered to be the earliest known bird, presenting a combination of dinosaur and bird characteristics.

Their wings differed from modern day birds in being composed of multiple layers of long feathers, appearing to represent early experiments in the evolution of the wing. Although individual feathers were relatively weak due to slender feather shafts, the layering of these wing feathers is likely to have produced a strong airfoil.

The inability to separate feathers suggests that taking off and flying at low speeds may have been limited, meaning that wings were primarily used in high-speed gliding or flapping flight.

Dr Jakob Vinther, from the University of Bristol's Schools of Biological and Earth Sciences, said: "We are starting to get an intricate picture of how feathers and birds evolved from within the dinosaurs. We now seem to see that feathers evolved initially for insulation. Later in evolution, more complex vaned or pinnate feathers evolved for display.

"These display feathers turned out to be excellent membranes that could have been utilised for aerial locomotion, which only very late in bird evolution became what we consider flapping flight. This new research is shedding light not just on how birds came to fly, but more specifically on how feathers came to be the way they are today - one of the most amazing and highly specialised structures in nature."

Dr Nicholas Longrich of Yale University added: "By studying fossils carefully, we are now able to start piecing together how the wing evolved. Before, it seemed that we had more or less modern wings from the Jurassic onwards. Now it's clear that early birds were more primitive and represented transitional forms linking birds to dinosaurs. We can see the wing slowly becoming more advanced as we move from Anchiornis, to Archaeopteryx, to later birds."

### END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New Informatics and Bioimaging Center combines resources, expertise from UMD, UMB

2012-11-21
ADELPHI, Md. – A new center that combines advanced computing resources at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) with clinical data and biomedical expertise at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) could soon revolutionize the efficiency and effectiveness of health care in the state of Maryland and beyond. The Center for Health-related Informatics and Bioimaging (CHIB) announced today joins computer scientists, life scientists, engineers, physicists, biostatisticians and others at the College Park campus with imaging specialists, physicians, clinicians ...

Wormholes from centuries-old art prints reveal the history of the 'worms'

Wormholes from centuries-old art prints reveal the history of the worms
2012-11-21
By examining art printed from woodblocks spanning five centuries, Blair Hedges, a professor of biology at Penn State University, has identified the species responsible for making the ever-present wormholes in European printed art since the Renaissance. The hole-makers, two species of wood-boring beetles, are widely distributed today, but the "wormhole record," as Hedges calls it, reveals a different pattern in the past, where the two species met along a zone across central Europe like a battle line of two armies. The research, which is the first of its kind to use printed ...

Human obedience: The myth of blind conformity

2012-11-21
In the 1960s and 1970s, classic social psychological studies were conducted that provided evidence that even normal, decent people can engage in acts of extreme cruelty when instructed to do so by others. However, in an essay published November 20 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, Professors Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher revisit these studies' conclusions and explain how awful acts involve not just obedience, but enthusiasm too—challenging the long-held belief that human beings are 'programmed' for conformity. This belief can be traced back to two landmark empirical ...

Beneficial microbes are 'selected and nurtured' in the human gut

2012-11-21
Animals, including humans, actively select the gut microbes that are the best partners and nurture them with nutritious secretions, suggests a new study led by Oxford University, and published November 20 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The Oxford team created an evolutionary computer model of interactions between gut microbes and the lining (the host epithelial cell layer) of the animal gut. The model shows that beneficial microbes that are slow-growing are rapidly lost, and need to be helped by host secretions, such as specific nutrients, that favour the beneficial ...

The evolution of human intellect: Human-specific regulation of neuronal genes

2012-11-21
A new study published November 20 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology has identified hundreds of small regions of the genome that appear to be uniquely regulated in human neurons. These regulatory differences distinguish us from other primates, including monkeys and apes, and as neurons are at the core of our unique cognitive abilities, these features may ultimately hold the key to our intellectual prowess (and also to our potential vulnerability to a wide range of 'human-specific' diseases from autism to Alzheimer's). Exploring which features in the genome separate ...

Study finds link between access to online health information and use of clinical services

2012-11-21
DENVER, Nov. 20 — Patients with online access to their medical record, including secure email communication with clinicians, had an associated increase in use of some clinical services, according to new Kaiser Permanente research published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study examined health records of more than 500,000 Kaiser Permanente members in Colorado between May 2005 and June 2010. The researchers looked at office visits, telephone encounters, after-hours clinic visits, emergency department encounters, and hospitalizations ...

Patients with online access to clinicians, medical records have increased use of clinical services

2012-11-21
CHICAGO – Patients with online access to their medical records and secure e-mail communication with clinicians had increased use of clinical services, including office visits and telephone encounters, compared to patients who did not have online access, according to a study appearing in the November 21 issue of JAMA. "Using health information technology to foster efficient health care delivery is an important component of health care reform," according to background information in the article. "Prior studies suggest that providing patients with online access to health ...

Citicoline does not improve functional, cognitive status in patients with traumatic brain injury

2012-11-21
CHICAGO – Although approved for use for treating traumatic brain injury (TBI) in nearly 60 countries, use of citicoline in a randomized trial that included more than 1,200 participants with TBI did not result in improvement in functional and cognitive status, according to a study appearing in the November 21 issue of JAMA. "Despite considerable advances in emergency and critical care management of TBI as well as decades of research on potential agents for neuroprotection or enhanced recovery, no effective pharmacotherapy has yet been identified," according to background ...

Xpert test for TB could help prevent deaths in southern Africa, but at substantial cost

2012-11-21
A rapid test for tuberculosis (TB) could help to reduce TB deaths, improve TB treatment, and also offer reasonably good value for money if introduced in southern Africa, an area that has high rates of HIV and a type of TB that is resistant to some drugs (multi-drug resistant TB), according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently recommended the use of a new diagnostic test for TB (the Xpert MTB/RIF test), which can show a result within 2 hours, in people at high risk of multi-drug resistant TB and/or HIV-associated ...

More work needed on models to predict risk of chronic kidney disease

2012-11-21
Models used for predicting the likelihood of individuals developing chronic kidney disease and for predicting disease progression in people who already have the condition are useful tools but not yet robust enough to help inform clinical guidelines, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Chronic kidney disease is a common but serious condition which can lead to kidney failure. The condition cannot be cured but progression of the disease can be slowed by controlling high blood pressure and diabetes, both causes of chronic kidney disease, and by adopting ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

Targeting FGFR2 may prevent or delay some KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancers

[Press-News.org] New evidence of dinosaurs' role in the evolution of bird flight