New dinosaur is close cousin of Velociraptor.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A new prehistoric fossil belonging to the largest winged dinosaur ever found was unveiled on Thursday in China.
Named Zhenyuanlong suni, the newly catalogued species was described by a paleontologist as a “fluffy feathered poodle from hell,” according to Headlines & Global News.
“This new dinosaur is one of the closest cousins of Velociraptor, but it looks just like a bird,” said paleontologist Steve Brusatte University of Edinburgh, who co-authored a scientific paper describing the new feathered monster. “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,” he told Gizmodo.
Despite the specimen’s impressive wings, scientists say the animal was probably incapable of flight. Brusatte said their function was a mystery, but they might have been used in colorful sexual displays. Another possibility is that the dinosaur used its wings to protect its eggs, according to The Guardian.
“The western part of Liaoning Province in China is one of the most famous places in the world for finding dinosaurs,” said Junchang Lü, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. “The first feathered dinosaurs were found here and now our discovery of Zhenyuanlong indicates that there is an even higher diversity of feathered dinosaurs than we thought. It’s amazing that new feathered dinosaurs are still being found.”
There was a certain backlash from the scientific community and paleontology-inclined film critics when the summer blockbuster “Jurassic World” failed to include any feathers, especially in the case of the velociraptors.
Perhaps now they might be willing to reconsider in time for the next film in the long running series.