BOZEMAN, MONT.--It's not often that a presentation given to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology elicits coos and clucks of sympathy. These are, after all, the scientists who study Tyrannosaurus rex and other fearsome beasts of the past. But that's exactly the reaction Kenneth Dial got when, at the group's annual meeting last October, he showed video footage of a fuzzy little partridge chick with its wings taped to its sides trying to climb a tree--only to tumble down into Dial's waiting hands. Unfettered, however, the chick flapped its tiny wings while climbing and steadily made its way up. After teasing the audience for its sentimental display, the University of Montana biologist returned to the matter at hand: explaining how this and other experiments involving ground-dwelling birds led him to hatch a new hypothesis regarding the origin of avian flight.

Traditionally, scholars have advanced two theories for how bird flight evolved. One of these, dubbed the arboreal model, holds that it developed in a tree-dwelling ancestor that was built for gliding but started flapping to extend its air time. The other, known as the cursorial theory, posits that flight arose in small, bipedal terrestrial theropod dinosaurs that sped along the ground with arms outstretched and leaped into the air while pursuing prey or evading predators. Feathers on their forelimbs enhanced lift, thereby allowing the creatures to take wing.

This article was originally published with the title Taking Wing.

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