Fossil reveals bizarre gliding creature that hunted birds 120 million years ago

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

(CNN) — A 120 million-year-old fossil found in what’s now northwestern China is changing how scientists think about an unusual group of predatory dinosaurs known as microraptors.

The location where the fossil was unearthed adds to the known geographical range of the smaller, gliding cousin of the sickle-clawed velociraptor.
The bones also represent the most recent definitive microraptor specimen in the fossil record, expanding the timeline for how long the feathered dinosaurs existed.

A new analysis of the intact shoulder and forelimb bones, first mentioned in a study abstract in 2010, showed the fossil belonged to a previously unknown microraptor species. The research team has named the dinosaur Jian changmaensis, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Annals of Carnegie Museum.

Jian references a one-winged bird in Chinese mythology as a nod to the dinosaur’s birdlike characteristics. The species name was also a nod to the Changma Basin in Gansu province, where the fossil was uncovered — and so far, it’s the only undoubted microraptor specimen to be found outside northeastern China.

“Jian changmaensis reveals that non-avian dinosaurs lived in what is now the Changma Basin, an area famous for its fossil birds,” said study coauthor Dr. Matt Lamanna, senior dinosaur researcher and Mary R. Dawson Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, in a statement.

“Our team has recovered more than one hundred bird fossils at Changma, but only this single non-avian dinosaur specimen. Jian provides critical new information on the biological history of the Changma region and the ecological context of the ancestors of today’s birds.”

The well-preserved fossil could help researchers understand better how microraptors used their wings to move between trees — offering new clues about the origins of avian flight, according to Lamanna.

A gliding predator

At first glance, artist reconstructions of microraptors look like a depiction of birds.

“If you saw that thing sitting in a tree, you wouldn’t think velociraptor from ‘Jurassic Park,’” Lamanna told CNN. “This is an extraordinarily birdlike dinosaur that could take to the air to some degree.”

Feathers covered a microraptor’s body — perhaps even more feathers than a bird because in addition to their arms, or “wings,” the dinosaurs also had long feathers on their hind legs, giving the appearance of four wings.

“That’s led many paleontologists to suggest that these things probably lived on the ground some but probably could climb and glided from tree to tree, almost like a modern flying squirrel,” Lamanna said.

The smallest microraptors were similar in size to modern crows. Jian changmaensis was likely the size of a barn owl. Other fossils that might belong to the microraptor group hint that these creatures could have reached larger sizes, which suggests that Jian changmaensis was somewhere in the middle.

Velociraptors and microraptors were not birds, but they were closely related to ancestors of the earliest birds, such as Archaeopteryx. The line separating dinosaurs and early birds becomes blurrier as more discoveries are made, Lamanna said, especially as fossils show characteristics of birdlike dinosaurs, or dinosaur-like birds. Modern birds remain the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, which went extinct about 66 million years ago after a massive asteroid struck Earth.

“They’re all dinosaurs in an evolutionary sense, but it really depends on which side of Archaeopteryx you fall,” Lamanna said.

For Jian changmaensis’s fossil, the dead giveaway that the wing belonged to a microraptor rather than an ancient bird, like so many others at the Changma Basin, was a distinctive feature in the coracoid, a component of the shoulder structure.

The supracoracoid fenestra is a large hole that nearly bisects the shoulder bone. The feature is something all microraptors possess but almost no other creature has, Lamanna said.

The purpose of this hole remains an open question for researchers; Lamanna said he believes it might be related to flight. Like modern birds, microraptors had long shoulder bones. Jian changmaensis has an exceptionally long one.

“It could have something to do with gliding or something about animals that are on the line to birds changing their shoulder structure to become more suited to flight effectively,” Lamanna said.

The fossil is only made up of a few bones, but the length indicates that the dinosaur was likely a flier, said Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh.
Brusatte was not involved in the study.

“This is neat, a new fossil of those dinosaurs that were basically on the cusp of becoming true birds,” Brusatte said.

A rare fossil in the Changma Basin

Researchers continue to speculate about why velociraptor’s smaller relatives evolved wings and took to the trees in the first place, but Lamanna suspects there was an open niche for tree-dwelling predators that microraptors filled.

Microraptor’s cousins lived on the ground, but inhabiting the canopy and gliding from tree to tree might have been a safer way to stay out of reach of larger meat-eating dinosaurs.

“Maybe these things started out on the ground, they started climbing and then once they’re up in the trees, you know, they evolve features to help them stay,” Lamanna said.

So what did Jian changmaensis feast on? Taking advantage of its arboreal habitat, birds were likely on the menu.

Previously, a microraptor fossil was found with the bones of a bird inside of its rib cage. And Lamanna’s coauthor Jingmai O’Connor, vertebrate paleontologist and associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago’s Field Museum, also pointed out wads of bone found in the Changma Basin resemble pellets that owls regurgitate after feeding on prey.

Jian may have also snacked on Gansus yumenensis, one of the first birds from the age of the dinosaurs ever found in China. Paleontologists uncovered that fossil in 1981 in the Changma Basin.

Lamanna and his team have been investigating the Changma Basin since 2004. They have recovered complete skeletons, some with feathers and skin, indicating that Gansus had webbed feet and likely spent at least some of its time in the water.

With the discovery of Jian, researchers finally know what was likely eating Gansus and other ancient birds at the site, Lamanna said. But if that’s the case, why has only one microraptor fossil been recovered at the site?

“If you could take a time machine back 120 million years ago, you’d be on the shore of a vast lake with vegetation surrounding it,” Lamanna said. “It stands to reason that maybe if you’re looking in a lake, you might find the animals that are living there more than you would find the animals that are living around the margins.”

Many bird and microraptor fossils are typically found crushed, flattened into two dimensions, which makes studying their bones and flight capabilities more challenging. But Jian’s fossil wing was preserved in three dimensions.

It’s rare to see the shoulder of a microraptor in 3D, said T. Alexander Dececchi, assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota. Dececchi did not participate in this study but has researched other microraptor specimens.

“It also expands the geographic range and helps show the diversity in anatomy of this group, all of which is important in determining where, when and who among them could use aerial locomotion,” Dececchi wrote in an email. “It also likely represents a different paleoenviroment, which, when added to our knowledge of the diverse diets these guys had, suggests that though all but one suspected Microraptorine are from northeastern China, within that area and time they were a common and widespread component of the ecosystem.”

The fossil will also enable scientists to study wing and flight evolution for microraptors, he added.

As a next step, Lamanna said he and his colleagues are interested in scanning the wing to see what it might reveal about the flight or gliding capabilities of microraptors.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.