This week in science: Meat on the wing

The four-winged microraptor may have been one heck of a flying machine. At least that's what some dino researchers say:

"In terms of aerodynamics, the hind wings would have increased its rate of turn by 33 to 50 percent, compared to using only the front wings," said Michael Habib of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, who co-presented the research at an annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Raleigh, North Carolina, last month.

But there's more, so much more! It was the descendents of feathered dinosaurs, called maniraptorians, that led to modern birds. Including the famous one that will grace milllions of tables in a few days. Think of it as a Happy Thanksgiving wish all the way from the Jurassic.

• Literally a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
• This could be a game changer in so many ways: artificial muscle.
• Kepler gets an extended mission, and there be rogue worlds with no loyalty to star or planet out there in the great beyond.
• The last common ancestor between neanders and us was a busy little spear throwing hunter:

  The 500,000-year-old stone points investigated in the new study came from a South African archaeological site called Kathu Pan 1. The research showed that the stone tips were also used in the early Middle Pleistocene, which is a period associated with Homo heidelbergensis.