SCORCHING the air from next year, the Eurofighter Typhoon jet will make use of a delta-wing construction to give it high speed and manoeuvrability. Rewind some 225 million years and peer into the forests of what is now Kyrgyzstan and you might have seen a lizard flying with the same wing configuration 鈥� though admittedly not at supersonic speeds.
All other flying vertebrates, from birds to flying squirrels, have wings attached to their forelimbs. According to a new reconstruction, however, this extinct reptile鈥檚 main wings were attached only to the hind limbs, giving it a delta-wing profile.
The lizard (Sharovipteryx mirabilis) is known only from a single fossil found in Kyrgyzstan and held in Russia鈥檚 Palaeontological Institute in Moscow. A team led by Gareth Dyke at University College Dublin in Ireland has now reassessed its wing structure, drawing on a re-examination of the fossil and knowledge of the aerodynamics of delta-wing planes.
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As well as a main wing, Dyke鈥檚 team say that the animal had a small triangular flight membrane between the forelimbs and the neck, to stabilise its flight and allow it to perform shallower glides. The Eurofighter Typhoon also relies on a forward 鈥渃anard鈥�; without something similar, the landing approach of Sharovipteryx would have been 鈥渇ast and potentially hazardous鈥�, the team believes.
The proposed structure gives better flight performance than that of gliding lizards alive today, which use membranes stretched between their ribs to produce lift. What鈥檚 more, it would not have interfered with walking. 鈥淭he flight membrane was elastic, so it didn鈥檛 matter that the animal had a membrane associated with its legs,鈥� says Dyke. The study will be published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
