MIT Senior Technical Instructor Dick Perdichizzi prepares a lifesize model of a prehistoric four-winged bird-like creature for testing in Aero-Astro's Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel. The model is based on fossils discovered in China. Aerodynamicists and paleontologists from the United States and China, along with a crew from the PBS Nova program, descended on the MIT facility last summer, experimenting with the articulated model to see if and how it might have flown. The resulting program, 'The Four-Winged Dinosaur' first aired Feb 26. Photo / William Litant

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 12, 2008 (download PDF).