Bat-Winged Dinosaurs in the Jurassic

“From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” —Dr. Seuss

A new discovery in China (natch) indicates that, during the Jurassic, there were flying dinosaurs that, effectively, used the same sort of propulsion system used by modern bats.  From Science Magazine:

A number of tiny, bat-winged dinosaurs flew the Jurassic skies, according to the strongest evidence yet for such creatures—a well-preserved fossil of a starling-size fluffball that may have looked a little like a flying squirrel. The find, recovered near a farming village in northeastern China, suggests dinosaurs were experimenting with several methods of flight during this period, but many were an evolutionary dead end.

“This fossil seals the deal—there really were bat-winged dinosaurs,” says Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved with the study.

Scientists were already confident that a number of dinosaurs could fly. There are birds, of course, which are technically dinosaurs and appeared during the Jurassic period, at least 150 million years ago. Other dinosaurs sported feathers on their hind- and forelimbs, effectively giving them four birdlike wings.

Evidently, most of these creatures were very small, some the size of a starling.  It seems that the idea of flight was much more common during this period than was originally thought.  Here is an artist’s reconstruction.

The more we discover, the stranger it gets.