A remarkable fossil site in northwestern China has yielded hundreds of prehistoric bird remains, including clusters of shattered bones compressed into pellet-like masses resembling those produced by modern owls. For years, paleontologists suspected that a larger predator was responsible for hunting these birds, but no direct evidence of such an animal had ever been found.
Now, a newly described dinosaur may provide the answer.
In a study published in the Annals of Carnegie Museum, researchers report the discovery of a previously unknown dinosaur species from the same fossil bed. The animal was a feathered relative of Velociraptor with long feathers on both its forelimbs and hind limbs. Based on distinctive features of its arm and shoulder bones, scientists believe this dinosaur may have been the predator responsible for the mysterious bird bone accumulations.
"Scientists have found these weird, broken-up clusters of bird bones at this site, and we didn't know what made them. This new microraptor dinosaur, Jian changmaensis, is our best guess," says Jingmai O'Connor, the associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago and senior author of the paper describing the new species. "It's the only dinosaur found at this site that wasn't a bird, it was a carnivore, and it was much bigger than everything else that we've found there."
