Dinosaur fossils featuring arms with a suspect bend at the elbow and wrist could hint at the presence of an unpreserved tendon that underpins all modern avian flight.
Without the tendon present, some scientists"It's not found in other vertebrates, and it's also found to have disappeared or lost its function in flightless birds, one of the reasons we know it's essential for flight,""So, in order to understand how flight evolved in birds, we must know how the propatagium evolved."
The problem is, the propatagium is a soft tissue, which means it's rarely preserved in the fossil record. What's more, this tendon is so thin, it doesn't leave much of a mark on the bones it attaches to. Thankfully, Hirasawa and his colleague, Yurika Uno, have figured out a way to 'see' the tendon, even when it's no longer there. The clue is to know how the propatagium restricts an animal's movements.
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