Remarkably preserved feathered dinosaur discovered in China reveals new secrets of flying predator evolution

September 30, 2026 thedigitalsolutioncentre@gmail.com

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An illustration of a large, four-winged dinosaur against a dark background. — An artist’s reconstruction of what the newly described bird-like dinosaur (*Norellraptor* *barsboldi*) would have looked like.

probably eating early mammals, lizards, amphibians and juvenile dinosaurs, said Scott Hartman, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wasn’t involved in the study. “It wouldn’t have been attacking any large dinosaurs. That would be like mosquitoes attacking battleships,” he told Live Science.

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N. barsboldi was a microraptor. Microraptors were close relatives of birds but not their ancestors; birds belong to a neighboring clade called Avialae. Fossils show that both microraptors and early bird-winged animals in the Avialae clade ‪—‬ such as Archaeopteryx, which lived in the Late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago ‪—‬ had feathers. The puzzle has been whether flight originated in an ancestor of both of these groups or if feathers — and potentially flight — evolved more than once.

The description of N. barsboldi by Andrea Cau, a paleontologist at the OPHIS Paleontological Museum and Herpetological Center in Italy, and his colleagues adds evidence to the latter theory. The team’s analysis found that around 30% of the 194 anatomical changes identified across microraptor evolution also evolved in the bird lineage. Aside from feathers, these changes included the fusion of bony projections to the ribs that created a rigid torso, forelimb bones that were relatively robust compared with the hind limbs, and an ulna (the primary weight-bearing bone for a wing) that was longer than the humerus.

“This demonstrates that microraptors acquired traits convergent with the early evolutionary stages of true birds, albeit through a distinct evolutionary pathway, supporting the hypothesis that flapping flight evolved independently in non-avialan dinosaurs and birds,” said Rui Pei, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who wasn’t involved in the work.

The hind wings would have been held directly under the body for stabilizing flight, braking and allowing for rapid control of tight turns. “These are clearly little predatory buggers,” he said. “If you’re leaping onto things or dropping onto things, that kind of control would be pretty important. It’s always best to surprise animals by landing where you planned to rather than somewhere you didn’t plan to.”

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Remarkably preserved feathered dinosaur discovered in China reveals new secrets of flying predator evolution

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