Fujianvenator prodigiosus
About 148 to 150 million years ago, a strange pheasant-sized and bird-like dinosaur with elongated legs and arms built much like wings inhabited southeastern China, with a puzzling anatomy suggesting it either was a fast runner or lived a lifestyle like a modern wading bird.
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Scientists said on 6th September 2023, they have unearthed in Fujian Province the fossil of a Jurassic Period dinosaur they named Fujianvenator prodigiosus- a creature that sheds light on a critical evolutionary stage in the origin of birds.
A remarkable event in dinosaur evolution came when small feathered two-legged dinosaurs from a lineage known as theropods gave rise to birds late in the Jurassic, with the oldest-known bird - Archaeopteryx - dating to roughly 150 million years ago in Germany.
Fujianvenator is a member of a grouping called avialans that includes all birds and their closest non-avian dinosaur relatives.
Despite their modest beginnings, birds survived the asteroid strike 66 million years ago that doomed their non-avian dinosaur comrades.
The Fujianvenator fossil, discovered last October, is fairly complete but lacks the animal’s skull and parts of its feet, making it hard to interpret its diet and lifestyle.
Fujianvenator’s lower leg bone - the tibia - was twice as long as its thigh bone - the femur. Such dimensions are unique among theropods; it also had a long bony tail.
The forelimb is generally built like a bird’s wing, but with three claws on the fingers, which are absent from modern birds. So you can call it wing. It cannot be determined whether it could fly or not.
The fossil itself does not preserve feathers. However, its closest relatives and nearly all the known avialan theropods have feathers.
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