Birds may not have been the only dinosaurs to work out flight, and they may not have even done it first. That question is behind a New York Times story published Tuesday, Oct. 13, that asks what four-winged dinosaurs can teach us about birds. The University of Minnesota added the piece to its news feed the same day. The listing doesn't say which, if any, UMN researchers are involved.
Norellraptor barsboldi is a microraptorine, part of a group of small, feathered predators closely related to birds. It's known from a complete skeleton about 22 inches (57 cm) long. A farmer found it near Lamadong in China's Liaoning province, and in 2023 it was donated to Hebei GEO University. The fossil comes from the Jiufotang Formation and dates to the Early Cretaceous.
Like its relatives, the animal had feathers on its arms, its legs and the tip of its tail, which is where the "four wings" come from. The feathers on its right hand were asymmetrical, the lopsided shape associated with flight. Its skull was also unusual, with large openings in front of each eye socket and a fused braincase full of air pockets.
The interesting part is how the anatomy was put together. Xuri Wang led a team of researchers from China, Italy and Slovakia, and they published their analysis in Nature Communications. They found 194 anatomical novelties in microraptorines. About 30% of those show up in birds too, but they appeared in a different order. Microraptorines shortened their finger bones first. Birds started with fused hand bones and longer breastbones. The researchers wrote that the 2 sequences "could not be considered the expression of a shared developmental regime." In other words, the 2 lineages most likely evolved flight independently and didn't inherit it from a shared flying ancestor.
The name is a tribute. The genus honors Mark Norell, the American Museum of Natural History paleontologist who died in 2025 and spent decades on feathered dinosaurs. The species name honors the late Mongolian paleontologist Rinchen Barsbold.
The idea that flight evolved more than once has been building for years. A complete, well-preserved skeleton with a clear developmental sequence gives that argument something solid to work with. The takeaway is that flight was probably not a single breakthrough that happened once. It may have been a problem that several dinosaur lineages solved separately.
The university's listing links to the Times article.
