Mar 25, 2024
Dinosaur feathers hint at flight history
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In this episode, Jingmai O’Connor and Yosef Kiat share insights gleaned from modern birds’ feathers that help understand the evolutionary history of flight in dinosaurs.
In this episode, we cover:
•[00:00] Introduction
•[01:02] Jingmai O’Connor, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Field
Museum of Natural History, describes the characteristics of
feathers associated with flight.
•[02:11] O’Connor gives context and background for previous
knowledge of the evolution of flight feathers in dinosaurs.
•[03:25] O’Connor describes the sources of fossil specimens for
analysis of feather evolution.
•[04:29] Yosef Kiat, an ornithologist at the Field Museum of
Natural History, tells what he learned about the consistent number
of primary feathers in modern birds. He also tells how that number
applies to dinosaurs.
•[05:54] O’Connor explains what the symmetry of feathers reveals
about a species’ flight ability and history.
•[06:29] Kiat applies feather symmetry to explain the flight
evolutionary history of Caudipteryx.
•[07:05] Kiat summarizes the findings of the study, using feather
number and shape to assess the flight abilities of four genera of
dinosaurs.
•[07:47] Kiat and O’Connor describe the type of potential fossil
evidence that could fill in holes in the history of flight
evolution in dinosaurs.
•[08:42] Kiat and O’Connor explain the study’s caveats and
limitations.
•[09:44] Conclusion.
About Our Guests:
Jingmai O’Connor
Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
Yosef Kiat
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
View related content here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2306639121
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