Bizarre’ bird-like dinosaur has scientists enthralled 

Fujianvenator prodigiosus, a pheasant-sized dinosaur, sheds light on the evolutionary stage of birds. It had a puzzling anatomy suggesting it was either a fast runner or lived a lifestyle like a modern wading bird.

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.

Scientists said on September 6 they 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.

The question of whether the Fujianvenator, with its curious mixture of skeletal features, should be classified as a bird depends on how one defines a bird, according to study leader Min Wang, a palaeontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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, Mr. Wang said. 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.