Four-winged Bird, First Birds Might Have Flown on Four Wings, Instead of two wings, the first birds might have used four feathered limbs to stay aloft, according to research published today in Science. Birdlike dinosaurs, such as Microraptor and Sinornithosaurus, are known to have had long, sturdy feathers on their hindlimbs. But until now, researchers were not sure whether the earliest birds had already abandoned this extra plumage when they emerged to take to the Cretaceous skies over 100 million years ago. Reported scientificamerican... The researchers, led by Xing Xu, a paleontologist at the Institute of Geology and Paleontology in Shandong, China, found evidence of feathers on the hindlimbs of 11 basal bird specimens (gathered from the Lower Cretaceous Jehol Group in China). On some of the individuals, these feathers appeared to be veined flight feathers that stood perpendicular to the leg bones, similar to those in the basal bird Archaeopteryx. One specimen, attributed to the Sa