An exquisite fossil of a fierce little Chinese dinosaur dubbed the 'dancing...
WASHINGTON - An exquisite fossil of a fierce little Chinese dinosaur dubbed the “dancing dragon” that lived 120 million years ago - an older cousin of the Velociraptor - is showing scientists that feathers grew differently on dinosaurs than on birds.
The two-legged Cretaceous Period dinosaur, called Wulong bohaiensis, was a bantamweight meat-eater - a bit bigger than a crow - residing in a lakeside environment, researchers said. It possessed a scaly face, a mouth full of pointy teeth and one particularly dangerous toe claw, and probably hunted small mammals, lizards, birds and fish.
“I don’t think we know yet how it used its feathers,” Poust said. “It seems likely that they helped with temperature regulation and signaling to other animals, but what this would have looked like and how much these functions mattered remains unclear.” A close examination of bones showed this Wulong individual was about a year old, a juvenile still growing.
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