Paleontologists have discovered the remains of what they believe is a four-winged creature that glided from ancient trees above its dinosaur cousins long before two wings took over to power flight.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/22/tech/main537530.shtml

A dinosaur version of the flying squirrel.

I wonder if it would have used gliding as an attack method as well as getting somewhere...

Four feathered wings. That's incredible. It must have worked reasonably well. Otherwise they wouldn't have been numerous enough to show up in the fossil record. I wonder if it beat its wings like a dragonfly with each set working oppositely. What a fantastic find.

:bugeye:

The picture next to the article in the local paper really caught my eye. Crazy find. The article I read indicated that it wasn't clear if that type of wing structure pre- or post-dated archaeopteryx.

A side note on this topic: Have you ever seen the bizzar breed of pigeons that people have produced over the years? Some actually do have flight feathers on their legs. Maybe not to the extent of this fossil, but defintitely flight feathers on the legs. It shouldn't be too surprising that some simple genetic changes could produce something like this. Also like the famous flies with feet instead of antenae.

It must have looked really odd when it flew, what with wings attached to it's hind feet. :bugeye:

Originally posted by Fraggle Rocker
They are not sure that the legs had the necessary musculature to flap

my first thought was it glided. perhaps from one tree to another

I know that some of these wierd pigeons cannot fly. Not sure about the ones I described above, but they didn't actually have wings on their feet-- just flight feathers.