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Plumage aplenty: fossil found of ‘four-winged’ feathered dinosaur

Posted by: Ken Gerhard on July 17th, 2014

In the course of my Thunderbird research, I receive many reports that seem to blur the lines between raptor type birds and pterosaurs. As this new find clearly illustrates – It is sometimes difficult to draw the line between birds and archaic reptiles.

NHM handout shows an artist’s rendering of the newly discovered feathered dinosaur, Changyuraptor yangi.





If a person saw Changyuraptor, the reaction likely would be: “Hey! That is a weird-looking bird,” according to paleontologist Alan Turner of Stony Brook University in New York, one of the researchers.

“So, think a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail,” Turner added.

Scientists have identified a handful of these ‘four-winged’ dinosaurs, known as microraptorines. Changyuraptor is the largest.

Read the rest of the article here.

About Ken Gerhard

4 Responses to “Plumage aplenty: fossil found of ‘four-winged’ feathered dinosaur”

  1. cryptokellie responds:


    1. There are no blurred lines between pterosaurs, a group of Mesozoic flying reptiles and “raptor type birds”. Birds are birds, whether you subscribe to avians as dinosaurs or not. Pterosaurs were a completely different line of reptiles that took to the air. The two groups (birds and pterosaurs) are not even very similar as pterosaurs were not dinosaurs. Pterosaurs share lineage aspects with both basal archosauromorph and dinosauromorph ancestors. This is yet a hotly debated subject among paleontologists. But they share almost nothing with “raptor type birds” except the fact that they can fly.

    2. Good advice is to wait for further study/verification about avian/dinosaur fossil finds from China. National Geographic found out the hard way when they had to retract an entire premier article about the “Archeoraptor” when the fossil was proven to be a hoax.

    3. Feathers do not necessarily guarantee a flying form. All birds have feathers, used for flight or not. Some smaller and juvenile dinosaurs might have possessed feathers but no known dinosaurs had the ability to fly. Once the pre-avian forms evolved flight feathers, along with many other adaptations, and took to the air they had ceased being dinosaurs proper and become, well…birds. Although I often wonder why dinosaurs proper did not invade the skies or the seas. Maybe future discoveries will open up newer cans of worms..

  2. Fhqwhgads responds:

    @cryptokellie — If it had flight feathers, wings, and hollowed bones to reduce weight, it’s a pretty good bet it either flew or is a recent descendant of a flying ancestor. Whether or not that makes it a bird is just a matter of nomenclature.

  3. Fhqwhgads responds:

    That is to say, near the base of any evolutionary tree it becomes unclear just what is a part of the tree and what is a close relative that is not a part of the tree. We get just that same confusion with Australopithecines — which species are our ancestors, and which are side branches? We get it with some early members of genus Homo. We get it with the ungulates that evolved into whales and with the fish that evolved into amphibians. This eventually becomes a matter of human taste, much like the decisions of how many continents there are and where the boundaries of these continents are (there are disagreements!) and what counts as a planet (nature shows a continuity with no regard for our classifications). So its kind of pointless to argue about whether creatures like Microraptor were birds.

    There is, of course, no such confusion about pterosaurs, which as cryptokellie says were quite distant relatives of birds and dinosaurs.

  4. cryptokellie responds:

    We are in agreement…if the fossil is authentic. I would wait for concise verification from several sources, before I threw my hat into this ring. The fabrication of fossil remains is a shady business and care should be taken…not get taken.

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