On the structure of hind wings

Above: Anchiornis model from NatGeo. Something is wrong with those foot feathers...

With all the recent hubbub over Anchiornis and its coloration, have come several pretty cool life reconstructions showing the animal as it would, supposedly, look in life. I posted one in my blog yesterday on the topic, and NatGeo has a cool 3D model on their site, here (and figured above).

One thing I've noticed about all these images is the very... standard rendering of the infamous hind wings (shared with Microraptor and Pedopenna). Much debate has surrounded these appendages, mainly relating to their ability to glide. A whole Nova special was made showing different attempts to reconstruct gliding posture, from biplane-like, to sprawled-out-sideways, to rear-swept canopy. And especially in that special, the same thing bugged me about the hind wings:

Every configuration required the primary foot feathers to emerge at a different angle from different parts of the limb!

It shouldn't be so hard to figure out how these feathers attached, which would help us suss out their potential uses. First of all, the reconstruction of Anchiornis above, and by extension reconstructions of Microraptor with the legs sprawled out, make little anatomical sense to me. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think we should look to the example of how front wings are put together to inform on this, as developmentally the two are almost certainly related.

Above: Incorrect, pronated-handed Velociraptor skeletal by Frederik Spindler, licensed. Just where are those primary feathers supposed to be attaching? To the underside of the fingers?

Back in the days of pronated theropod hands, many similary ridiculous renderings of feathered theropods were made, many by me. Of course, we all know how wings 'look' when folded - primary and secondary feathers swept back along the side of the body. The problem is that, if the hand is incorrectly shown as pronated, this arrangement makes no sense. On a pronated hand, the feathers emerge laterally from the edge of the finger and hand, and from the lateral side of the ulna. Only when the hand is not pronated does the proper wing configuration emerge. If real wing anatomy were taken into consideration, artists of bunny-wrist theropods would show the primary feathers sicking out to the side of the animal, not flush with the body, when the arms are folded. Otherwise, the feathers would be attached to the palm of the hand, which is ridiculous.

Above: Probably incorrect rendering of Microraptor. Just how is this animal supposed to sit down?

So why isn't this also true of the foot? My guess: it is. For all intents and purposes, the foot is the same configuration as the hand, only it really is pronated. The toes and metatarsals are equivalent to the fingers and metacarpals. I'll put this to the experts out there, because it's something I've never seen addressed and makes no sense to me. If the hind wing feathers projected posteriorly from the metatarsals, how are these animals supposed to have sat, or brooded their eggs? We have several fossil examples of theropods sitting, sleeping, or brooding, all with metatarsals fully in contact with the ground. If there were very large, rigid feathers pointing straight down from the foot, that would be impossible. Furthermore, developmentally, it seems we would expect the legs to mirror the arms, with primary leg feathers articulating from the top of pedal digit 2 and metacarpal 2. Therefore, sticking straight out to the side when standing.

Above: An animal capable of sitting, with sticky-out hind wings. AMNH.

Now, maybe I missed something so please correct me if any of my reasoning is wrong. But in short, I believe the biplane or semi-biplane model is the only one anatomically feasible, barring some novel adaptation like feathers with a hinge at their base to allow them to deploy outward like an X-Wing from Star Wars. The pedal primaries have to have pointed out to the side, while the tibial primaries of the lower leg would still point backward, as in the model above. So all those recons purporting to show Anchiornis as it really was miss a pretty important point. Not to mention the naked, beak-like snout, doesn't anybody look at fossils anymore? ;)

Above: This pigeon with sticky-out, biplane configured foot feathers is apparently able to sit down.

Another note on this--maybe my whole reasoning about comparing the front to hind wings is off. Can't we then compare to modern hind winged animals? Like the one pictured above? Those foot feathers do not point backward and, as you can see, the animal is therefore able to sit. Imagine those feathers configured like the Anchiornis model at the top of this post. It just doesn't work.