Four-Winged Bird: Fossils from China Suggest there were Feathered Dinosaurs

It certainly seems like something out of a sci-fi movie, but a new study on fossils suggests that more than 100 million years ago, birds living in what is now China sported wings on their legs.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, researchers found evidence of large leg feathers in 11 bird speciments from China's Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, which suggest that early birds had four wings, and this may have played a role in the evolution of flight. 

As birds are closely related to dinosaurs, many scientists believe that birds evolved from their feathered friends, and this theory certainly supports that. In 2000, scientists discovered a nonavian dinosaur with feathers on its arms and legs, called Microraptor, which could probably fly.

In addition, specimens of Archaeopteryx, a transitional fossil between modern birds and feathered dinosaurs, show faint featherlike structures on their legs, but the signs are poorly preserved.

Reports also show that leg feathers have been spotted in 11 museum fossils collected from the Lower Cretaceous Jehol formation in Liaoning, China, from a period of 150 million to 100 million years ago. The feathers are stiff and stick straight out from the birds' legs, which provide a large surface for them to be aerodynamic, according to researchers.

The fossils belong to at least four different groups, including the genera Sapeornis, Yanornis andConfuciusornis, as well as the Enantiornithes group, and these findings suggest that leg feathers weren't just an evolutionary rarity.

"These new fossils fill in many gaps in our view of the early evolution of birds," animal flight expertDavid Alexander of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who was not involved in the study, said, according to Science magazine. Alexander agrees that the feathers probably had some aerodynamic function, "although whether as stabilizers, steering vanes, or full-blown wings remains to be seen."

The report is published in the journal Science.