ArticleNature communications2023
Decoupling body shape and mass distribution in birds and their dinosaurian ancestors.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mitochondrial Activity Localization in the Skeletal Muscle and Its Individual Fibers Across Tetrapods.Biology of the cell · 2026Article
- New perspectives on head and neck allometry and ecomorphology in tetrapods.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Cranial anatomy, palaeoneurology, palaeobiology and stratigraphic age of the large-bodied ornithopod,PeerJ · 2026Article
- New perspectives on body size and shape evolution in dinosaurs.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Enlargement of sternum traits facilitated the evolution of powered flight in birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Limb bone robusticity is coupled with mass distribution in terrestrial tetrapods.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Bird sternum evolution facilitated the origins of powered flight.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Adaptive landscapes unveil the complex evolutionary path from sprawling to upright forelimb function and posture in mammals.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Hindlimb biomechanics of Lagosuchus talampayensis (Archosauria, Dinosauriformes), with comments on skeletal morphology.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Exploring the accuracy of palaeobiological modelling procedures in forward-dynamics simulations of maximum-effort vertical jumping.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- When the lung invades: a review of avian postcranial skeletal pneumaticity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Biomechanical modeling of musculoskeletal function related to the terrestrial locomotion of Riojasuchus tenuisceps (Archosauria: Ornithosuchidae).Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2025Article
- Article
- Muscle-controlled physics simulations of bird locomotion resolve the grounded running paradox.Science advances · 2024Article
- Testing the form-function paradigm: body shape correlates with kinematics but not energetics in selectively-bred birds.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Volumetric versus Element-scaling Mass Estimation and Its Application to Permo-Triassic Tetrapods.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is accepted that non-avian theropod dinosaurs, with their long muscular tails and small forelimbs, had a centre-of-mass close to the hip, while extant birds, with their reduced tails and enlarged wings have their mass centred more cranially. Transition between these states is considered crucial to two key innovations in the avian locomotor system: crouched bipedalism and powered flight. Here we use image-based models to challenge this dichotomy. Rather than a phylogenetic distinction between 'dinosaurian' and 'avian' conditions, we find terrestrial versus volant taxa occupy distinct regions of centre-of-mass morphospace consistent with the disparate demands of terrestrial bipedalism and flight. We track this decoupled evolution of body shape and mass distribution through bird evolution, including the origin of centre-of-mass positions more advantageous for flight and major reversions coincident with terrestriality. We recover modularity in the evolution of limb proportions and centre-of-mass that suggests fully crouched bipedalism evolved after powered flight.
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