Talk:Microraptor

NPOV "powered flight" or "passive gliding"

These terms assume an artificial divide between "powered" and "unpowered" situations that simply isn't there. In both cases wings and body surfaces produce resultant forces from drag and lift and there is no physical basis for separating them as living fliers other than squid and flying fish do not have a separate thrust-producing "engine". In this case, the analogy to airplanes is specious and presupposes that natural solutions to biomechanical problems will look like the human-engineered solutions.

--- I can see the reasoning behind the terms. For one example,a flying squirrel does not fly by muscular-assisted "power"; it does, in fact, glide "passively". I will agree that it does use muscles for maneuvering, but this not the same as using them to generate lift by flapping. I think it is really stretch to make a symantic argument about the terms. 166.67.66.7 (talk) 16:40, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

NPOV of Naming

and second, because they do not want Olson's nomenclatural sabotage to succeed.

I don't think this meets NPOV. It might be the view of "Most paleontologists", but then it should be mentioned that this is their POV. I propose:

and second, because they view Olson's name as "nomenclatural sabotage" and do not want to support it. - Jokermage 06:37:17, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

Species

There are two species in the genus Microraptor, M. gui and M. zhaoianus. M. gui is the 4-winged species, but zhaoianus were only an arboreal dinosaur withouth wings. This article is wrong. Maniraptor

The type specimen of M. zhaoianus is too poorly preserved (compared to M. gui) to deduce the extent of its wings. The fact that Cryptovolans pauli (which may also be a species of Microraptor) has the same four-wing body plan suggests that all members of the family Microraptoria had similar wings. Incidentally, Senter et al 2004 find that M. zhaoianus, M. gui, and C. pauli are all the same species anyway (M. zhaoianus). --Dinoguy2 04:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Recently PBS aired a Nova or Nature episode where it was proved the microraptor did NOT fly biplane style but did leap & glide from tree to tree and the hind legs & tail overlapped in a way to form a delta wing. To land, the dino lowered its rear legs which then acted as a brake. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.179.30.13 (talk) 11:06, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Archaeoraptor

The Archaeoraptor page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoraptor) says that Storrs Olson actually did not establish Archaeoraptor liaoningensis as a new taxon, so Archaeoraptor liaoningensis Olson, 2000 is a nomen nudum. Therefore, update the writing under the section "Naming".

Storrs L. Olson, 2000. Countdown to Piltdown at National Geographic: the rise and fall of Archaeoraptor. Backbone, newsletter of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, 13(2) (April): 1–3.

3 | Naming

"So, according to some interpretations of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the valid name for this dinosaur probably is Archaeoraptor liaoningensis Olson 2000."

Is it right for 'Olsen 2000' to appear after the name without any punctuation or anything? w00tboy 23:41, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Simply a bird?

Is it possible that microraptor is a bird? Stephen Czerkas (flying dromaeosaurs, are birds really dinosaurs) has put forward this theory. Do other scientists support his idea, and should it be mentioned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.24.147.64 (talk) 15:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's possible. 70.80.215.121 (talk) 13:32, 23 May 2011 (UTC)Adam70.80.215.121 (talk) 13:32, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

It depends on your definition of "bird". MMartyniuk (talk) 13:52, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

i would not consider Microraptor to be a bird, no birds today have teeth and the contemporary bird Confuciusornis similarly had no teeth. Microraptor was only able to glide, but to give you credit it is very birdlike. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.138.213.207 (talk) 02:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Ichthyornis isn't a bird now? FunkMonk (talk) 03:03, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Heard the expression "if it quacks like a duck then it is one"? This is a bird. Or at least, a transitional fossil. You can also call it a birdlike dinosaur or a dinosaur-like bird. It's more like other birds than it is like, I don't know, sauropods? It's pretty inappropriate to group it with sauropods and stegosauruses (they're dinosaurs) than with birds. The thing is even shaped a like a bird, despite having teeth and a tail. Btw, it doesn't matter if it had teeth or not - Archaeopteryx had them as well and scientists call it "the first bird". What does "glide" supposed to meaning? Chickens and ostriches glide as well. So by that logic, they're not birds? Again, what matters is how it looks and its size overall. This looks like a bird overall. And that's that. ~ Meganesia (talk) 16:38, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

In that case, many dinosaurs are bird, and that's the thing, the lines are blurred in the transitional stages, so it is kind of a pointless argument. FunkMonk (talk) 10:00, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

It's entirely subjective which clade you equate it to. I personally equate it so Avialae, making Microraptor certainly not one. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 15:40, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

The most popular definition of "bird" used in paleontology is the clade Avialae, which refers to all animals closer to modern birds than to dromaeosaurids or troodontids. Many skeletal features show that Microraptor is a dromaeosaurid, therefore it is not an avialan and not a "bird" if "bird" equals "avialan". The term "bird" (or the class "Aves") is kind of an archaic, linnean term which was formulated long before dinosaur fossils were discovered, so it gets a bit shaky when those are added into the mix. A recent study (Cau, 2018) showed how the features used to distinguish modern birds were accumulated slowly and gradually. It's quite difficult to draw the line between what is a bird and what is not a bird when you take all these features into account. And you are right about one thing. Microraptor is extraordinarily more bird-like than a sauropod or stegosaur. However, since birds are part of Dinosauria, something can be both a bird and a dinosaur. Birds are just a specific subset of dinosaurs, and our definition of where that subset begins is basically a matter of personal taste. Your personal taste may define Microraptor as a bird because of its long wing feathers (which originated in Pennaraptora or earlier) or its bird-like body shape (which probably predated dinosaurs), and that's fine. But most paleontologists use Avialae as the start of "birds", so they would disagree with your taste. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 15:11, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Species in caption

Funk: just saw your edit to the image caption for Hong Kong specimen. Do we know for sure that's M. gui? Is there a specimen number or anything? If it's an unpublished specimen I suppose we can go by the label if there is one but most people don't consider M. gui distinct anyway. Dinoguy2 (talk) 20:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, well, it's not that I care much, but for example in the Pachyrhinosaurus article it is nice to have written what species is shown in an image because the differences are obvious, but I can see that it isn't so here. That it is gui was just written on the image page. FunkMonk (talk) 21:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

"Over 300 undescribed specimens"

This is mentioned twice in the article, including once in the lead. The article body states: "In 2010, it was reported that there were over 300 undescribed specimens attributable to Microraptor or its close relatives among the collections of several Chinese museums, though many had been altered or composited by private fossil collectors." The source cited for this, the model test paper by Alexander et al, says "We observed >300 microraptorians, sensu Senter (2), at these institutions, including the holotypes of Microraptor gui and M. zhaoianus (3–5)." It does not reference the specimens being undescribed, and certainly doesn't mention them being "altered or composited" by private collectors. Is anyone aware of a source - whether it's a scientific article, a book, or a news source - that explicitly mentions this? I've tried looking without success. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 03:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

M. hanqingi

Any idea what to do with M. hanqingi? Even if it's almost certainly going to turn out to be junior synonym, there aren't any good sources for this (yet) and is a perfectly valid name. Albertonykus (talk) 16:40, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

It should definitely be discussed in the text, if not also put in the taxobox (along with a question-marked M. gui since there's some disagreement about that one). MMartyniuk (talk) 18:46, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Wind tunnel image

Do image review standards apply to published diagrams? The new wind tunnel paper uncritically reproduced to extremely anatomically inaccurate life restoration from the M. gui description in their diagrams and models (making the paper's conclusions scientifically worthless). MMartyniuk (talk) 13:04, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I guess it is pretty important for historical purposes? After all, the animal has been depicted like that countless times, and the text does go into controversies. Could add to the caption "models, including an anatomically inaccurate sprawling configuration", or some such. FunkMonk (talk) 13:17, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

If not, I could also crop it so it is only the image with the windtunnel itself, which looks accurate. Or leave out B and H. FunkMonk (talk) 13:21, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I created the images shown. They are not all intended to be anatomically correct; they show some postures proposed in the literature (the sprawled posture of Xu's original reconstruction and the biplane posture of Chatterjee et al as well as the legs down posture favored by Dyke et al 2013) that other sources consider to be anatomically unfeasible. They also show the results of a "Mr Potatohead" exercise in which feathers were removed from the legs and tail to see the effect - the presence of feathers on the legs and tail is no longer in doubt. The text of the open access PLOS One article (which appears not to be cited in the article) clarifies this. That article should be cited and added to the discussion, especially if images are to be used in it - it has many advances compared to the prior work (especially Dyke et al 2013), none of which considered the potential role in aerial maneuvering and which proposes an alternative to the gliding/flapping dichotomy (which the authors of Evangelista et al 2014 consider to be a false dichotomy). Also I think the license for our image specifies using it as is and citing it. There is a good caption to go with the image as well as an entire paper about it available open access at PLOS One.

Ok, good to know! FunkMonk (talk) 00:51, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Species/Lack Thereof

The taxobox lists three species, M. gui, the type M. zhaoianus, and M hanqingi. However, the latter gets only two hits on the whole page (both merely stating it exists in a list of species - it's sort of implied in the lead its also invalid, but no source is given for the statement in general), and M. gui is variously mentioned as a likely synonym off the type in off comments, but nowhere is an actual paragraph dedicated to this, which seems necessary. No "species" section exists at all, which again seems bizarre. I feel there's some desperate need of expansion/clarification regarding what the species are, and the arguments towards and/or against them being distinct. Also, the Dinosaur page uses the M. gui specimen, listed with that name, in the taxobox image. Should we be using M. zhaoianus for that? If no consensus is clear, could another theropod be chosen? Lusotitan 00:30, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

I think the problem is that there isn't really a consensus in the literature... But then again, I'm not very familiar with it. FunkMonk (talk) 00:51, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

I figured that, but again, there should at least be some more discussion about that disagreement, and M. hanqingi actually existing. Lusotitan 02:30, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

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