The fossil is as old as the ‘first bird’, Archaeopteryx, and might have specialized in running or wading instead of flying One hundred and fifty million years ago, a young, bantam-sized, bird-like dinosaur became mired in a swamp in what is now southeastern China, and succumbed. Its fossilized remains, unearthed in 2022 and named Fujianvenator prodigiosus, show it to be one of the earliest bird-like dinosaurs to date from the Jurassic period. The researchers describe their discovery in a paper published in Nature. “This is really a weird animal within the group of birds,” says Mark Loewen, a palaeontologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who was not involved in the discovery. The creature had oddly lanky legs and might have lacked the ability to fly. It also doesn't...
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