'There was a lot of experimentation in flight styles among early birds. 'What this all shows is that birds did not evolve all of the features they needed to fly in a nice, clear, straightforward way,' Brusatte says. Steve Brusatte, a University of Edinburgh palaeontologist and senior editor of the paper, says the discovery is 'one of the most important in recent years' because it allows scientists to understand more about the evolution of birds and the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. The creature's short wing span allowed it to move quickly between the trees, but its successors would go on to develop two shoulder bones, the scapula and coracoid, which enabled the wings to flap for long distance flight. In an paper published in scientific journal PNAS this week, the team from the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing say the crow-sized animal lived amongst the trees and lakes of the forest province of Hebei. 'This is what Velociraptor would have looked like too. 'The movies have it wrong,' Brusatte said.

The creature, scientists say, had lost the long tail of the Tyrannosaurus Rex but was yet to develop feathers, or a fused shoulder girdle, to aid flight. 'Its a dinosaur with huge wings made up of quill pen feathers, just like an eagle or a vulture,' Steve Brusatte, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and a co-author of the study, said in a statement. They believe the 127-million-year-old bird, named Jinguofortis perplexus, was alive at a key moment in the evolution of the species. Palaeontologists have confirmed a fossil found in northeast China is that of a newly-discovered prehistoric bird with dinosaur features.

Steve brusatte dinosaur feathers china