LONDON: A bizarre pigeon-sized dinosaur with bat-like wings made of skin rather than feathers has been identified in China, shedding new light on the evolution of flight.
The dinosaur, named Yi qi, has the shortest name ever given to a dino which means “strange wing.”
At 160 million years old, the dinosaur is older than the first known birds, such as Archaeopteryx. It also appears to be the earliest known flying non-avian dinosaur. “This is the most unexpected discovery I have ever made, even though I have found a few really bizarre dinosaurs in my career,” paleontologist Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing said.
“It demonstrates how extreme the experimentation for dinosaurs to get in air is,” said Xu, the lead author of the study.
Researchers unearthed the remains for Yi qi at Hebei Province in China, ‘Discovery News’ reported. The rod-like bones that extended from each wrist of the tiny dinosaur and weighed about the same as a modern pigeon puzzled the scientists. Their real purpose was determined by co-author Corwin Sullivan, a Canadian paleontologist now based at the IVPP, after he pored over scientific literature on flying and gliding animals.
