Feathered dinosaur was smart enough to fly like a bird

A feathered dinosaur that lived 147 million years ago had the ability to fly like a bird, a study has revealed.

A feathered dinosaur that lived 147 million years ago had the ability to fly like a bird, a study has revealed.

The findings could finally end a debate that has raged ever since the first archaeopteryx fossil was discovered in a German limestone quarry two years after Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859.

A detailed scan of the braincase of archaeopteryx has now revealed that its brain was big enough to pilot the animal in fully fledged flight. Archaeopteryx shared many skeletal features in common with dinosaurs, such as a jaw with teeth and clawed hands, but it also possessed some of the unique features of birds, notably feathered wings and a wishbone in its breast.

The argument centred on whether archaeopteryx really could fly like a bird or whether it simply used its wings and long, feathered tail to hop or glide, much like some modern animals such as "flying" squirrels.

An international team of researchers used a high-resolution medical scanner to look inside the braincase of archaeopteryx to analyse its ability to process visual images - a key requirement of powered flight. In a study published in the journal Nature, they found that archaeopteryx had a brain similar to a modern-day sparrow, parrot or eagle, which they say proves for the first time that the creature could fly.

One of the implications of the work is that birds started flying earlier than previously thought - soon after they evolved from their ancestors, the feathered dinosaurs. Angela Milner, a dinosaur expert at the Natural History Museum in London, said that detailed scans of archaeopteryx's inner ear also show that it possessed the sophisticated organs of balance that were also crucial for flight.

Dr Milner said: "If flight was this advanced by the time archaeopteryx was around, then were birds actually flying millions of years earlier than we'd previously thought? As yet we have no earlier fossils to help us piece together this fascinating evolutionary story and this study has shown how much there is still to discover about when and how bird flight began."

Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, said: "[The authors of the study] argue that archaeopteryx basically had 'the right stuff' from a neural standpoint, for flight."