New species of dinosaur discovered with bat wings
- Published
The new dinosaurs had bat-like wings
A new species of tiny dinosaur has been discovered with bat-like wings.
The dino fossil was discovered in Liaoning Province, China, and is thought to be around 163 million years old.
Researcher Min Wang and their colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing discovered that the dinosaurs had long, pointed wrist bones and membranous wings like a bat.
The reasons why this is unusual is because scansoriopterygids - the family of dinosaurs this species belong to - usually only have feathered wings and long fingers.
The tiny dinosaurs would have lived in trees and flown around
The two new species called Yi qi and Ambopteryx longibrachium weigh just 200 grams - that's less than a bag of sugar!
The researchers think that the scansoriopterygids with feathers might have outlived those with the bat wings, and that's why they became the more dominant species.
- Published2 May 2019
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