Newly identified dinosaur not a feathered friend

     This newest discovery leads scientists to speculate that there was more diversity in the dromaeosaurid dinosaur -- a carnivorous bipedal creature -- than previously thought. “It is possible (and indeed probable) that not all of these species lived together,” the authors wrote in the journal Scientific Reports, published July 16.
     The fossilized remains, uncovered in China, form a new species called Zhenyuanlong suni. In part, the name honors the man who secured the fossil specimen. The fossil was donated by a farmer who did not want his identity known, the paper states, but part of the name -- long -- from Chinese pinyin, means dragon. 
     The creature certainly sounds dragonlike, with a large body and short arms. There were feathers, the scientists write, particularly on the arms and tail. It was roughly 5½ feet long, probably didn’t fly and lived in the early Cretaceous period. (The Cretaceous period began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.) 
     In a statement on the University of Edinburgh website, Steve Brusatte, a co-author of the paper, remarked, “This new dinosaur is one of the closest cousins of Velociraptor, but it looks just like a bird. It’s a dinosaur with huge wings made up of quill pen feathers, just like an eagle or a vulture. The movies have it wrong—this is what Velociraptor would have looked like too.”
     The research, “A large, short-armed, winged dromaeosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Early Cretaceous of China and its implications for feather evolution,” was authored by Junchang Lü of the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing, and Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh’s school of geosciences.

     Related:

     Newly discovered dinosaur had thorny crown

     Newly identified dinosaur: A chicken from hell 

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