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Researchers Discover Largest Ever Dinosaur With Birdlike Wings and Feathers

Posted by Soulskill on from the death-chickens-of-the-mesozoic dept.

sciencehabit writes: When we see birds winging their way across the sky, we are really looking at living dinosaurs—the only lineage of these mighty beasts that survived mass extinction. Yet before they went extinct, many dinosaurs sprouted wings themselves. Researchers now report finding the largest ever winged dino in China, a sleek, birdlike creature adorned with multiple layers of feathers all over its arms and torso that lived 125 million years ago. The dino was about 1.65 meters long, a little longer than a modern condor, but at an estimated 20 kilograms, it was probably nearly twice as heavy as that bird. It almost certainly could not fly, however—an important confirmation that wings and feathers originally evolved to serve other functions like attracting mates and keeping eggs warm.

47 comments

  1. Cows are for dinosaurs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are all dinosaurs. Dinosaurs say awwrghh. AWWWRRGGGHHH! AWWWRRGGGHHH! Awwrghh say the dinosaurs. YOU DINOSAURS!!

  2. WIngs are for? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Even for a flightless creature, wings could certainly help it run faster and steadier, turn quicker, and/or leap further. I've got no clue, just sayin.....

    1. Re:WIngs are for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I always wondered about Buffalo wings...

    2. Re:WIngs are for? by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      Even for a flightless creature, wings could certainly help it run faster and steadier, turn quicker, and/or leap further. I've got no clue, just sayin.....

      Other than leaping further, limbs would be just as useful if not more so than wings. Wings could also help you stop faster, if that was of any benefit.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    3. Re:WIngs are for? by TimSSG · · Score: 1

      I always wondered about Buffalo wings...

      My I still try to find the online comic that jokes about Buffalo fingers. Tim S.

  3. I don't understand... by fleabay · · Score: 1

    I don't understand how scientists could use birdlike wings and feathers to find large dinosaurs.

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    PlanetVulkan.com
    1. Re:I don't understand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I don't get is how someone would think of the idea of having a birdlike wing. Wouldn't it always be better to have a winglike wing?
      If you want a birdlike wing you might as well get a birdlike bird.

    2. Re:I don't understand... by darthsilun · · Score: 0

      What I don't get is how someone would think of the idea of having a birdlike wing. Wouldn't it always be better to have a winglike wing? If you want a birdlike wing you might as well get a birdlike bird.

      Maybe you could get a batlike wing? Or a an F18 fighter jetlike wing? Or a pteranodonlike wing? whudyathink?

  4. Need Jurassic World Reboot by ScentCone · · Score: 2

    Read another piece yesterday that mentioned the find in question here was of a very, very close cousin to the good ol' Velociraptor. The conclusion there was that the Velociraptor was likely feathered as well, and not likely to look much like the leather/scaley beasts from the movies (and, um, they weren't that big, either, apparently).

    --
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    1. Re:Need Jurassic World Reboot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Future anthropologists probably won't realize we're feathered either.

    2. Re:Need Jurassic World Reboot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're just saying that so Randall doesn't run around getting scared about stuff like this. Imagine, if you're Randall, that there is a whole subcontinent sized mass where Velocoraptor relatives got a running start, so to speak.

      You'd never leave New Jersey,

    3. Re:Need Jurassic World Reboot by tompaulco · · Score: 3, Informative

      Read another piece yesterday that mentioned the find in question here was of a very, very close cousin to the good ol' Velociraptor. The conclusion there was that the Velociraptor was likely feathered as well, and not likely to look much like the leather/scaley beasts from the movies (and, um, they weren't that big, either, apparently).

      The movie mentioned that same thing about feathers and said that the public wanted big scary monsters with no feathers.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    4. Re:Need Jurassic World Reboot by cb88 · · Score: 1

      All humans look like patrick stewart...

    5. Re:Need Jurassic World Reboot by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Read another piece yesterday that mentioned the find in question here was of a very, very close cousin to the good ol' Velociraptor. The conclusion there was that the Velociraptor was likely feathered as well, and not likely to look much like the leather/scaley beasts from the movies (and, um, they weren't that big, either, apparently).

      Yeah, what they had in the movie looked like Deinonychus. But Velociraptor sounds like something more 12 year old boys would pay to see.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
  5. Bum rap by Tablizer · · Score: 1, Funny

    It would suck to be a dino: your front arms are too short to yank off.

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    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Bum rap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You're assuming their cock is as short as yours.

    2. Re:Bum rap by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Probably didn't have a penis either. You'd just rub your cloaca up against your mate's,and transfer the sperm that way.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  6. Feather origin still unclear by Webs+101 · · Score: 5, Informative

    (I was a grad student of John Ostrom's once upon a time.)

    This may be "the first evidence of feather morphologies and distribution in a short-armed (and probably non-volant) dromaeosaurid" but this dinosaur says nothing about the origins of flight feathers. It lived 25 million years AFTER Archaeopteryx, so there were certainly flight feathers around for a very long time before it. This is really no more surprising than the fact that ostriches and emus still have feathers.

    The real question, which remains unanswered, is the exact relationship between dromaeosurids and birds and whether flight originated from the ground up (use of drag to control running) or the top down (use of drag to create lift).

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  7. Birds are not living dinosaurs, by fredrated · · Score: 2

    they are birds. It's called speciation.

    1. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      My first thought on that was that surely crocodiles, alligators, and turtles are also modern descendants of the dinosaur lineage. I don't think they evolved from small mammals.

      --
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    2. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "Dinosaur" is not a species. Nor is "bird."

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    3. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Ken_g6 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      XKCD disagrees with you.

      --
      (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
    4. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Argumentum ad xkcd
      Proof by intimidation.

    5. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      surely crocodiles, alligators, and turtles are also modern descendants of the dinosaur lineage

      They most certainly are not. dinosaurs, crocodiles and turtles share a common ancestor, and none of them descended from the other.

    6. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      Well, sure, if you redefine the word 'dinosaur'.

      Oh look. That's what they did.

      I'll stick with the old definition of dinosaur: reptiles that lived millions of years ago.

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    7. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Xtifr · · Score: 2

      "Reptile"is another word that no longer has a solid scientific definition. (In large part because of birds.)

      The classic definition of reptile (since you're so enamored of classic, outmoded definitions of terms) includes being cold-blooded, though, so Dinosaurs wouldn't qualify anyway.

      But if you really enjoy speaking your own variant of English that is out of sync with what most people speak, more power to you. Just don't expect people to understand your antiquated and bizarrely anti-scientific terminology. Perhaps you can also refer to fire as "phlogiston-release". :)

    8. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Opyros · · Score: 1

      Thank you for finding a topic other than "Pluto is/isn't a planet" for Slashdot to uselessly quibble about!

    9. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      Actually, the Wikipedia article I linked to explicitly says that my definition is what most people consider to be correct. It's only a new generation of 'dinosaur experts' that have decided they don't like that definition, and have came up with a new classification system. Now, only one particular group of ancient reptiles counts as dinosaurs, based solely on their hip joint, even though many of that group don't fit at all the classic view of dinosaurs.

      As a point of fact, the term 'dinosaur' is itself mis-descriptive because neither part of the word is particularly accurate to the new classification. I guess the word should join phlogiston on the heap of discredited scientific lore.

      ---------------

      Fine. I get it. New crops of scientists have different views from their predecessors. They look at things from a different angle, make different assumptions, and produce different classifications. Eventually new models are agreed on, even though those new models are also open to re-interpretation by the next wave of scientists. So, just as I'll wait for Pluto to again be called a planet in its own right, I'll wait for dinosaurs to include ancient reptiles that seem to fit the template better than the hummingbird does.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    10. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, separating ancient reptile from dinosaurs has been going on for quite a long time - even in the 70s dimetrodon, for instance, was classified as a mammal-like reptile rather than a dinosaur. You'd have to go back at least another 20-30 years to get to the "dinosaurs are reptiles" theory.

      Just because "most people" consider something correct does not make it so. Science is not - or at least should not be - a popularity contest. Something is either true, or not true, and belief plays no role in that.

    11. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Trogre · · Score: 1

      XKCD is wrong.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    12. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Carewolf · · Score: 1

      My first thought on that was that surely crocodiles, alligators, and turtles are also modern descendants of the dinosaur lineage. I don't think they evolved from small mammals.

      No... Just like mammals are not descendants of dinosaurs. Not all prehistoric animals were dinosaurs, only the birds were. The reptile and mammal ancestors were contemporary with dinosaurs but were different groups. Think of them as respectively furry, scaly and feathered prehistoric -saurs, with the feathered being the dinos.

    13. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And whales and bats aren't living mammals?

    14. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The old classification system makes as much sense as referring to mammals as including everything with hair and mammary glands except bats, which would be excluded from "mammals" because they happen to also fly. You could extend this exclusionary definition to leave out whales, which also don't walk on land.

      There isn't much left to distinguish birds from dinosaurs except that some of them fly. The anatomical distinction between them is so burry that it becomes difficult to come up with a definition that works. They intergrade. Even if you do (which is technically possible), in a branching, hierarchical, derived system of classification and process, you can't stop being something simply because you've become so modified it becomes more difficult to spot the relationship.

      Humans remain primates, mammals, amniotes, tetrapods and vertebrates. That's the case even though we no longer walk on 4 legs like ancient tetrapods did and we no longer have much hair compared to most other mammals. Likewise birds are dinosaurs, amniotes, tetrapods and vertebrates. The fact that their forelimbs, like ours, are highly modified for functions other than walking does not make them stop being tetrapods, and does not change the hierarchical relationship. Birds are an unusual type of dinosaur. That this defies the everyday idea of dinosaurs that many people have in their heads (big, toothy, and reptilian) is only a reflection of our familiarity and historical tradition, the value of which shouldn't be discounted too much, but recognizing birds as a flavour of dinosaurs leads to a much closer understanding of what they really are. Even if you stick to the non-bird ones, the traditional idea of dinosaurs also neglects the discovery that plenty of dinosaurs are small, some don't have teeth, and there are signs that some of them were warm-blooded or had analogous metabolisms.

      If you want to live with a concept of dinosaurs that reflects the scientific understanding of 50 years ago, that's fine, but we have a term for that group already: non-avian dinosaurs.

      Finally, dinosaurs have had a definition based on the geometry of their hip and leg bones and were distinguished from other reptilian groups on that basis since the 19th century. They haven't meant merely "ancient reptile" in probably a century and a half.

    15. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by fredrated · · Score: 1

      Picky picky.

    16. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Righty righty.

    17. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      Is the current scientific consensus also "wrong"?

      Scientific consensus is that birds are modern theropod dinosaurs.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Under phylogenetic taxonomy, dinosaurs are usually defined as the group consisting of Triceratops, Neornithes [modern birds], their most recent common ancestor (MRCA), and all descendants

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    18. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not sure that's ever been the definition since perhaps a short time in the mid-1800s before people figured out the geometry of the hip in dinosaurs, and that it differed from almost all other reptilian groups.

    19. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Birds are dinosaurs because they are the descendants of dinosaurs. It's called taxonomy.

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      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    20. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      Crocodilians (crocs and alligators), testudinid (turtles and tortoises), dinosaurs (including their minor group of birds), are all archosaurs, along with some extinct groups like mosasaurs. Lizards and snakes are on a different lineage. I forget where the pterosaurs fit in.

      "Reptile" is a taxonomic bucket list. Best avoided.

      Mammals are more closely related to the archosaurs than the lizards.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    21. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Words are important, particularly when you're talking about taxonomy.

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      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    22. Re:Birds are not living dinosaurs, by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      All living dinosaurs are birds. You're wrong; Randall Monroe is right.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  8. Incomplete headline by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    Researchers Discover Largest Ever Dinosaur With Birdlike Wings and Feathers

    ...that we know of so far. There could have been a larger one we haven't discovered yet.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  9. Click Bait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Largest Birdlike Dinosaur Ever" seems a more apt description.

    1. Re:Click Bait by almitydave · · Score: 1

      "Largest Birdlike Dinosaur Ever" seems a more apt description.

      I'd argue that's more misleading. Although the technical definition of "dinosaur" excludes pterosaurs, it's worth nothing that there were some rather large ones, notably Quetzalcoatlus which had a ~35 ft. wingspan, but wasn't feathered - it had wings of a thin fleshy membrane, like a bat.

      So "dinosaur with birdlike wings and feathers" is an important distinction.

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  10. Too fanciful. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    They depict a large fearsome creature in blue. Not at all like a friendly yellow bird. So it is not Big Bird.

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  11. Not another Chinese fake is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not another Chinese fake l keep on getting conned into buying from ebay is it... like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ?