ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Preserved soft anatomy confirms shoulder-powered upstroke of early theropod flyers, reveals enhanced early pygostylian upstroke, and explains early sternum loss.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Reconstruction of pectoral musculature in non-avialan paravians and basal birds: implications in the acquisition of flapping flight.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Enlargement of sternum traits facilitated the evolution of powered flight in birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Forelimb feathering, soft tissues, and skeleton of the flying dromaeosaurid Microraptor.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- New information on the Hind limb feathering, soft tissues and skeleton of Microraptor (Theropoda: Dromaeosauridae).BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Insights into the early evolution of modern avian physiology from fossilized soft tissues from the Mesozoic.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Hidden artistic complexity of Peru's Chancay culture discovered in tattoos by laser-stimulated fluorescence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Toward a Comprehensive Anatomical Matrix for Crown Birds: Phylogenetic Insights from the Pectoral Girdle and Forelimb Skeleton.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Paleoecology of extinct species.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Decoupling body shape and mass distribution in birds and their dinosaurian ancestors.Nature communications · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Anatomy of the first flying feathered dinosaurs, modern birds and crocodylians, proposes an ancestral flight system divided between shoulder and chest muscles, before the upstroke muscles migrated beneath the body. This ancestral flight system featured the dorsally positioned deltoids and supracoracoideus controlling the upstroke and the chest-bound pectoralis controlling the downstroke. Preserved soft anatomy is needed to contextualize the origin of the modern flight system, but this has remained elusive. Here we reveal the soft anatomy of the earliest theropod flyers preserved as residual skin chemistry covering the body and delimiting its margins. These data provide preserved soft anatomy that independently validate the ancestral theropod flight system. The heavily constructed shoulder and more weakly constructed chest in the early pygostylian
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