Microraptor, a tree-climbing dinosaur discovered in my country

The authoritative British scientific journal "Nature" published on December 7, 2000 published a scientific paper published by young scientists Xu Xing, Zhou Zhonghe and Wang Youlin from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, describing their latest discovery of the world. Microraptor, the smallest theropod dinosaur in the world, was revealed to the world.

China Paleontology Museum

Psittacosaurus

Affected by various media for a long time, dinosaurs are considered giants in the minds of the general public. However, scientists have long discovered many species of small dinosaurs. The Psittacosaurus exhibited in the China Paleontological Museum is an example, with a length of no more than 1 meter. However, all previously discovered adult dinosaurs were larger than the world's most primitive bird, Archaeopteryx. This time, Chinese scientists finally discovered an adult dinosaur smaller than Archaeopteryx, with a body length of no more than 40 centimeters. This "dwarf dinosaur" named Microraptor belongs to the family Chisauridae and is a close relative of the Velociraptor shown in the famous movie "Jurassic Park".

Archaeopteryx

What’s even more interesting is that Xu Xing and other scientists studied the bone structure of Microraptor’s hind feet and found that Microraptor was not only as good at running as other small theropod dinosaurs, but it also had the ability to climb trees, so it might Has amphibious habits. This discovery provides important evidence for the first time for the arboreal theory of the origin of bird flight ability.

Looking back on the research history in recent decades, although more and more paleontologists have supported the theory that birds originated from dinosaurs, the debate about the origin of birds' flight ability has always been fierce. Since theropod dinosaurs are generally believed to be good at running animals that lived on land, most scholars who support the theory that birds originated from dinosaurs also support the theory that the flight ability of birds originated from the process of running. But some scientists support the arboreal theory of the origin of bird flight.

Microraptor

Chatterjee, a scientist at Texas Tech, and Witmer, a scientist at Ohio University, believe that birds may have evolved from a small theropod dinosaur that lived in trees. They believe that some kind of small theropod dinosaur that originally ran on the ground moved to the trees for some reason. Then, this theropod dinosaur gradually developed the ability to glide between branches or toward the ground during its arboreal life, until it finally evolved into a primitive bird with the ability to actively flap its wings.

However, this hypothesis has not received sufficient attention in the past. The main reason is that there is no fossil evidence. The small theropod dinosaurs known in the past that were systematically related to birds were all animals that lived on the ground, and their skeletal structure characteristics only showed that they had a strong ability to run. Although Chatterjee and others believe that Velociraptor and other poolsaurus dinosaurs may climb trees, they have not found strong evidence of their skeletal morphology.

This time, Xu Xing and others studied the position of the toes of small dinosaurs, the length of the toe segments, and the shape of the terminal toe segments, and compared them with typical ground-dwelling dinosaurs, ground-dwelling birds, and arboreal birds. Most theropods are strikingly different in that their hind feet have distinctly arboreal characteristics. In the comparison, they also found that not only did Microraptor have arboreal characteristics, but the structure of its hind legs of its close relatives, other dromaeosaurs, had also obviously changed. These findings indicate that small theropod dinosaurs were not as capable of running as people thought in the past, and that some small theropod dinosaurs already had the ability to climb trees. Therefore, the living habits of small theropod dinosaurs will not be as simple as thought in the past, and some traditional ecological rehabilitation diagrams of theropod dinosaurs may have to be redrawn.

So far, Microraptor is the dinosaur that is morphologically closest to birds. Its discovery provides scientists with important information about the evolution of theropod dinosaurs into birds. In addition, the study of Microraptor also clarified a huge mistake that occurred not long ago in the history of paleontology. It was through studying Microraptor that Xu Xing and others found conclusive evidence that the once sensational "Liaoning Archaeoraptor" was actually a forged specimen. Xu Xing once published a short article in the American "National Geographic" magazine published in March 2000, pointing out the error of "Liaoning Archaeoraptor". This time, Xu Xing and others corrected this error in an academic paper for the first time in the journal Nature.

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