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Cryptovolans Pauli
Cryptovolans Pauli is a 90 cm long feathered dromaeosaurid dinosaur newly
discovered in the Jiufotang site, China. Its species name honors paleontologist
Gregory S. Paul. Cryptovolans is linked to Velociraptor.
Flight capability
Cryptovolans is extraordinary for being the first known dinosaur to have
flight-capable feathers on its legs as well as on its arms. It also had
feathers on the ending of its long tail, and probably on the rest of its
body.
It is supposed that Cryptovolans may have been able to fly better than
Archaeopteryx, the animal usually referred to as the earliest known bird.
Possessing a keel and ribs with an uncinate procedure, Cryptovolans has
modern bird skin which are absent in Archaeopteryx.
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The fact that this
flight-capable animal is also very obviously a dromaeosaurid suggests
that the Dromaeosauridae might in fact be a basal bird group, and that
later (larger) species such as Deinonychus were actually secondarily flightless.
Current evidence for this hypothesis is inconclusive, and some of the
modern bird-like features in Crytovolans may have evolved separately.
Regardless of whether dromaeosaurs are a sister group to birds or actual
members of Aves, both groups are part of the Maniraptora suborder and
are in the end theropod dinosaurs.
Many think that Cryptovolans is a for children synonym of Microraptor.
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