Paleobiology
Although numerous artists' reconstructions of Rahonavis show it in flight, it is not clear that it could fly; there has even been some doubt that the forearm material, which includes the quill knobs, belongs with the rest of the skeleton. Some researchers have suggested that Rahonavis represents a chimera consisting of the forelimb of a bird conflated with the skeleton of a dromaeosaurid, and consider Rahona as described a nomen dubium. The nearby discovery of the primitive bird Vorona berivotrensis at least shows that the possibility of a mix-up cannot be fully excluded. However, many other scientists, including the original describers of Rahonavis, maintain that its remains belong to a single animal, citing the close proximity of the wing bones to the rest of the skeleton. All the bones attributed to Rahonavis were buried in an area "smaller than a letter-sized page", according to co-describer Luis M. Chiappe in his 2007 book Glorified Dinosaurs. Additionally, Chiappe argued that suggestions of a chimera by paleornithologist Larry Martin were based on Martin's misinterpretation of the wing and shoulder bones as being more advanced than they really are.
Chiappe maintained that Rahonavis could probably fly, noting that its ulna was large and robust compared to Archaeopteryx, and that this fact, coupled with the prominent quill knobs, suggest that Rahonavis had larger and more powerful wings than that earlier bird. Additionally, Rahonavis shoulder bones show evidence of ligament attachments allowing the independent mobility needed for flapping flight. Chiappe concluded that Rahonavis was capable of flight, though it would have been more "clumsy in the air than modern birds." Agnolín and Novas (2013) noted that, like Microraptor, a bat-like flightstroke using the deltoideus complexes seems to have been likely in R. ostromi.
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