Editing Microraptor (section)

===Implications===
[[File:Tetrapteryx.jpg|thumb|left|[[William Beebe]]'s hypothetical "''Tetrapteryx''" with four wings, 1915]]
The unique wing arrangement found in ''Microraptor'' raised the question of whether the evolution of flight in modern birds went through a four-winged stage, or whether four-winged gliders like ''Microraptor'' were an evolutionary side-branch that left no descendants. As early as 1915, [[Natural history|naturalist]] [[William Beebe]] had argued that the evolution of bird flight may have gone through a four-winged (or ''tetrapteryx'') stage.<ref name="beebe1915">{{cite journal | last1 = Beebe | first1 = C. W. A. | year = 1915 | title = Tetrapteryx stage in the ancestry of birds | journal = Zoologica | volume = 2 | pages = 38–52 }}</ref> Chatterjee and Templin did not take a strong stance on this possibility, noting that both a conventional interpretation and a tetrapteryx stage are equally possible. However, based on the presence of unusually long leg feathers in various feathered dinosaurs, ''[[Archaeopteryx]]'', and some modern birds such as raptors, as well as the discovery of further dinosaurs with long primary feathers on their feet (such as ''[[Pedopenna]]''), the authors argued that the current body of evidence, both from morphology and phylogeny, suggests that bird flight did shift at some point from shared limb dominance to front-limb dominance and that all modern birds may have evolved from four-winged ancestors, or at least ancestors with unusually long leg feathers relative to the modern configuration.<ref name="chatterjee2007"/>