dinosaur

This story just goes to show that fact, albeit rather ancient in origin, was truly far stranger than fiction – a four winged dinosaur bird – in my ongoing mapping of non native charismatic mega fauna I would love to be able to say this fossil had turned up somewhere in rural England, where, after all, in some places fossil hunting has a noble history. The story tells us:

Archaeologists have unearthed the fossil of a “four-winged” dinosaur bird – indicating that feathered dinosaurs may have been able to fly before the evolution of birds.

The long tail feathers of Changyuraptor, from north-east China, would have provided the stability and speed control required for a safe landing.

At four feet long and weighing 90 pounds, the creature, which lived 125 million years ago, is the biggest dinosaur of its type yet discovered.

The well-preserved fossil shows that its body was cloaked by a full set of feathers and, in comparison with its body size, the foot-long tail feathers were unusually long.

“Four-winged” dinosaurs, known as microraptorines, are so-called because the long feathers attached to their legs have the appearance of a second set of wings.