标题：COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS WILL
SHED ANEW LGHT ON FUNCTIONAL-MORPHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF CONFUCIUSORNITHIDS (AVES)IN EASTERNASIA DURING EARLY CRETACEOUS
摘要：Eastern Asia can be regarded as a dynamic en-vironment during the Early Cretaceous in which the whole biota was complex and diverse,so the differ-entiation of early birds was also pronounced in this period. Confuciusornithids only uncovered from Eastern Asia, are an important early bird group for revealing the origin and early evolution of avian flight. However, results on confuciusornithid flight capabilities mainly come from qualitative analysis or speculation and analogism because of insufficient in-formation from fossils, limited analogues in living birds, and no rigorous biomechanical testing. As an essential and popular tool in quantitative simulation and analysis, computational fluid dynamics(CFD)has major advantages over other techniques and has been well developed in recent years to solve general morphological-functional problems in palaeontolog-ical research. CFD is beneficial for studying the flight capability of confuciusomithids and will pro-vide new quantitative evidence for the origin and evolution of early bird flight. In addition, we expect that interdisciplinary, exploratory, and tentative work will soon be applied in other similar studies, which will allowus to develop a quantitative method that can be applied effectively in functional-morpho-logical analyses.
