Avian Wing Proportions and Flight Styles: First Step towards Predicting the Flight Modes of Mesozoic Birds

We investigated the relationship between wing element proportions and flight mode in a dataset of living avian species to provide a framework for making basic estimates of the range of flight styles evolved by Mesozoic birds. Our results show that feather length (fprim) and total arm length (ta) (sum of the humerus, ulna and manus length) ratios differ significantly between four flight style groups defined and widely used for living birds and as...