‘Weird’ dinosaur prompts rethink of bird evolution – Nature

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One hundred and fifty million years ago, a young, bantam-sized, bird-like dinosaur became mired in a swamp in what is now southeastern China, and succumbed. Its fossilized remains, unearthed in 2022 and named Fujianvenator prodigiosus, show it to be one of the earliest bird-like dinosaurs to date from the Jurassic period. The researchers describe their discovery in a paper published today in Nature¹.

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Nature 621, 239 (2023)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02757-5
Xu, L. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06513-7 (2023).
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