Fujianvenator: 'Bizarre' long-legged bird-like dinosaur discovered in China

Scientists in China have found fossils of a tiny bird-like dinosaur with a long lower leg. The "bizarre" fossil suggests that this strange pheasant-sized dinosaur inhabited southeast China about 148 to 150 million years ago.

It has elongated legs and arms built much like wings. It also had a baffling anatomy, which suggests that it either was a fast runner or lived a lifestyle like a modern wading bird.

The fossilised remains, which were unearthed in 2022, show it to be one of the earliest bird-like dinosaurs to date from the Jurassic period.

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Researchers have named it Fujianvenator prodigiosus and described their discovery in a paper published on Wednesday (September 6) in the journal Nature.

As quoted by the journal, Mark Loewen, who is a palaeontologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said: "This is really a weird animal within the group of birds." Notably, Loewen was not involved in the discovery.

Scientists have unearthed the fossil in Fujian Province. They believe that the creature sheds light on a critical evolutionary stage in the origin of birds.

As quoted by the news agency Reuters, study leader Min Wang, a palaeontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the definition of Fujianvenator will be based on the classification of this mixture of skeletal features.

On being asked about how Fujianvenator should be described, Wang replied, "I would say 'bizarre'. Fujianvenator is far from similar to any modern birds."

"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. Based on the skeletal features, Fujianvenator probably is at least not good at flying," Wang said.

"The fossil itself does not preserve feathers. However, its closest relatives and nearly all the known avialan theropods have feathers, and feathers are widely distributed among dinosaurs. Therefore, it would not be a surprise if Fujianvenator had feathers," Wang added.

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What does the history say?

The study of dinosaurs tells that a significant event in their evolution came when small feathered two-legged dinosaurs from a lineage known as theropods gave rise to birds late in the Jurassic. The oldest-known bird - Archaeopteryx - dates to roughly 150 million years ago in Germany.

Wang said that Fujianvenator is an avialan, which comprises all birds and their closest non-avian dinosaur cousins. Despite their humble beginnings, birds survived the asteroid catastrophe that killed their non-avian dinosaur brethren 66 million years ago.

The Fujianvenator fossil, discovered last October, is quite complete but lacking the animal's skull and sections of its feet, making interpretation of its nutrition and lifestyle difficult.

Fujianvenator's lower leg bone - the tibia - was twice as long as its thigh bone - the femur. Such dimensions are unique among theropods, a group that includes all the meat-eating dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and various others. It also had a long bony tail.

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