Yale News has a post about research into what makes "peacocks to strut, penguins to waddle, and turkeys to trot." See the study published in the journal Nature.
Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of Yale paleontologists prefers drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction among some dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago helped make it possible for peacocks to strut, penguins to waddle, and turkeys to trot.
“A good way to understand this is to take a look at drumsticks, like the ones people eat on Thanksgiving,” said Armita Manafzadeh, lead author of a new study in Nature. She is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, the Department of Earth & Planetary Science, and the Yale Peabody Museum.
“Under the meat of a drumstick, you’ll find two bones — the tibia, which is long and thick, and the fibula, which is much shorter and thinner,” Manafzadeh explained. “This shortened fibula is what allows birds to twist and turn around when they’re not in flight. And to understand its evolutionary story, we have to look at dinosaurs.”
