By Sid Perkins
The wings were willing, but the feathers were weak. Delicate, thin-shafted plumage would have made flapping difficult if not impossible for two prehistoric birds, a new analysis of fossil feathers suggests.
Their feathers probably would have buckled or snapped during strong flapping or sharp maneuvers, so the primitive birds may have been limited to gliding, says Robert Nudds, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Manchester in England. He and paleontologist Gareth Dyke of University College Dublin report an engineering analysis of feathers from the ancient birds Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis in the May 14 Science.
Nudds and Dyke used a simple formula often applied to bridges and beams to estimate the load-carrying capacities of the birds’ feathers, based on fossil remains. The team also looked at the feathers of four modern birds with a variety of feather and flight types — a pigeon, a gull, an albatross and a vulture.