Powered flight among large living things has been around for hundreds of millions of years. Dinosaurs, and their relatives the pterosaurs, figured out how to take to the skies long before their avian descendants today did. Now, a new species of dinosaur is shedding some light on the evolutionary path that lofted reptiles skyward.
The fossil, discovered in Liaoning Province in China and named Ambopteryx longibrachium, is actually notable for the fact that it seems to be an altogether different experiment in flight than the one that led to birds today. Instead of the feathery wings that give birds lift, this dinosaur, dated to 163 million years ago, had a wing structure that looked much more like a bat’s.
