Dramatic Fossils Suggest Early Birds Were Biplanes



Michael Balter


When the Wright brothers took to the skies from Kitty Hawk in December 1903, they did it in a biplane, a craft with two pairs of parallel wings. Most early aircraft were biplanes, but by the 1930s, the faster monoplane design, with just two wings, dominated aviation. On page 1309, a Chinese team presents dramatic new fossils suggesting that early birds went through a similar evolution, starting off with wings on both arms and legs and only later adopting the arms-only, monoplane configuration.


http://app.aaas-science.org/e/er?s=1906&lid=28091&elq=abddb7832e1f43f78e409d767aa3bb04