The News
Ancient reptiles may have begun biplane-type flight
By Randolph E. Schmid The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 01/22/2007 08:05:17 PM MST

Washington - When the Wright Brothers first took to the sky in a biplane, they were using a design nature may have tried 125 million years earlier. A new study of one of the earliest feathered dinosaurs suggests it may have had upper and lower sets of wings, much like the biplanes of early aviation. Today, the biplane is widely considered an old-fashioned rarity. And the design is no longer seen in birds, although it's not clear whether it was a step on the way to modern birds or a dead end in nature and discarded. The intriguing possibility of a biplane dinosaur - Microraptor gui - is suggested by Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University.

The Research
Read the research behind this story in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences