Public Events --

Brownbag Lectures: The Four-Winged Dinosaur

Brownbag Lectures: The Four-Winged Dinosaur

• Location: ISM Research & Collections Center, Springfield
• Date: Wednesday, November 05, 2008, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Long ago in the age of dinosaur, a volcano in northeastern China erupted and buried a host of strange creatures in ash, creating exquisite fossils that preserved a big surprise—many dinosaurs were covered in feathers. One of them was a four-winged dinosaur. Dr. Hong Qian will provide a video showing how the four-winged dinosaur flies.

(Note that this program differs from the one presented by Dr. Qian in 2004 about the dinosaur fossils of northeastern China)

This one-hour program is divided into six chapters.

(1) FEATHERED DINOSAURS: Liaoning Province in the northeastern corner of China has produced some of the most spectacular fossils ever seen, including one that may hold clues to the origin of flight.

(2) A PUZZLE: The dinosaur-bird connection first came to light in the 1860's, when quarrymen in Germany discovered a fossil called Archaeopteryx, a creature with feathered wings of a bird and the skeleton of a small carnivorous dinosaur.

(3) MICRORAPTO: The discovery in China of Microraptor, a four-winged feathered dinosaur, reignites a long-running controversy over how birds evolved flight.

(4) MODELLING: Two teams take different approaches to creating a scientifically accurate model of Microraptor, one using a cast from a single fossil, and the other making a sculpture based on 16 different specimens.

(5) WIND TUNNEL: Experts from the American Museum of Natural History, Harvard, Brown, and MIT fly a model of Microraptor in a wind tunnel to see how four wings might have worked.

(6) AN UNEXPECTED FIND: The wind tunnel experiment suggests that Microraptor could have formed a useful wing with its hind limbs in typical dinosaur posture and been a perfectly capable glider, but its still not clear whether this was the pathway to flight for birds or a dead-end experiment in gliding dinosaurs. 

One of our Brownbag Lectures

Weekly lectures held at the Museum's Research and Collections Center. Lectures are usually held during lunchtime on Wednesday. The RCC is located at 1011 E. Ash Street in Springfield. Access to the building is from 10 ½ Street (between Ash and Laurel Streets), where there is ample visitor parking in the west parking lot. For more information, please call 217-785-0037. Brown Bag Lectures are free and open to the public.

Also, if you want to be informed of upcoming lectures by email, you can sign up for the brownbag announcement list.