Tibet, September 28: Chinese researchers have unearthed the fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings in north-eastern China, which they suggest is a missing link in dinosaurs’ evolution into birds.
In a paper in the journal Nature, they said they found the well-preserved fossil of the Anchiornis huxleyi, which roamed the earth some 160 million years ago, in a geological formation in China’s north-eastern Liaoning province.
About the size of a chicken, the fossil has a total body length of less than 50cm and a skull about 6cm long, lead researcher Xing Xu at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing said.
“This finding suggests that birds are likely to be descended from a kind of small-sized four-winged dinosaur about 160 million years ago,” Mr Xu said.
“It is a link between more typical theropods (dinosaurs which moved around with two rear limbs) and birds. It lived around a time period … that we expected for birds’ ancestor.”
The researchers said long feathers covered the creature’s arms, tail and feet, suggesting that a four-winged stage “may have existed in the transition to birds”.
The transition from dinosaurs to birds is still poorly understood because of the lack of well-preserved fossils, and many scientists say bird-like dinosaurs appear too late in the fossil record to be the true ancestors of birds.
The Chinese researchers believe the fossil is the oldest bird-like dinosaur reported so far; older than Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird.
“The presence of such a species at this time in the fossil record effectively disputes the argument that bird-like dinosaurs appeared too late to be the ancestors of birds,” they wrote.
—Agencies