Microraptor may have resembled Wright bros. plane

This is about a dinosaur. Not some weirdo that never got his plane off the ground. The Microraptor was a giant bird, but according to this article, interestingly enough, had the look of a biplane with two sets of wings? Amazing what types of animals roamed the earth millions of years ago. Always interesting to hear about a new discovery.

WASHINGTON (AP) - When the Wright brothers first took to the sky in a biplane, they were using a design nature may have tried 125 million years earlier.

A new study of one of the earliest feathered dinosaurs suggests it may have had upper and lower sets of wings, much like the biplanes of early aviation. Today, the biplane is widely considered an old-fashioned rarity.

And the design is no longer seen in birds, though it's not clear if it was a step on the way to modern birds or a dead end, tested by nature and discarded.

Full story