Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
NEW YORK (AP) — A pint-sized dinosaur has a big surprise: It apparently sported a pair of bizarre wings.
Dinosaurs normally used wings mostly made of feathers for flight. But the newly discovered creature evidently had wings made of skin instead, like those of a bat or some ancient flying reptiles.
It's not clear whether they flapped or merely let the creature glide.
A fossil of the two-legged dinosaur was reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. The creature weighed less than a pound when it lived in northeast China some 160 million years ago. The Chinese researchers named it Yi qi, (ee chee), which is Mandarin for "strange wing."
The evidence for the wings comes from bones extending from the wrists like rods, plus some patches of skin.
___
Online:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
