![]() ![]() "It's a dinosaur with huge wings made up of quill pen feathers, just like an eagle or a vulture. "This new dinosaur is one of the closest cousins of Velociraptor, but it looks just like a bird," study co-author Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences said in a statement. But that doesn't make the fossilized remnants of intricate feathers less exciting: It indicates that other members of the raptor family could have had feathers, too - even the ones not suited for flight. Its arm structure couldn't have supported its five-foot-long body with the kind of muscle-powered flight that birds use today. Zhenyuanlong suni probably didn't fly, according to researchers' analysis of its fossilized remains. But bigger species in the group tend to have shorter forelimbs not well-suited for flight, and paleontologists had never found feathers on one of those big-boned raptors - until now. Many smaller species in the group have been found with long forelimbs and feathered wings, indicating that they might have flown. ![]() The new species is part of the group - known informally as raptors - that would precede birds, the only dinosaurs remaining on Earth today. ![]() In a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers describe Zhenyuanlong suni, a cousin of the famed Velociraptor that lived around 125 million years ago. Paleontologists working in China have found a new dinosaur with one of the most complex, well-preserved set of wings ever seen on a specimen of its size. ![]()
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