The New Four Winged Raptor: Jian changmaensis

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Ling-Qi Zhou, et al. First non-avian theropod (dromaeosauridae, microraptorinae) from the bird-bearing lower cretaceous xiagou formation of the Changma Basin, Gansu province, northwestern China, Annals of Carnegie Museum(2026)

Meet Jian changmaensis, the new, four winged, flying, velociraptor relative from china that's solving a decades old mystery that left a trail of bodies in the fossil record!

Episode 288

Notes:

There's a brand new four-winged flying Velociraptor relative that's going to be solving a decades-old mystery in paleontology. Here's your most recent paleontology news almost daily or whenever I get around to it. So, the early Cretaceous Changma Basin has had a mystery for decades where paleontologists have been finding tons of dinosaur fossils, but not the ones you'd expect. They've been finding just bird fossils. And don't get me wrong, that's awesome, especially with this level of preservation because they've been finding feathers, skin, everything. And weird piles of bone that seem to resemble owl pellets. And you'd think that being in the Cretaceous, there would have been plenty of non-avian dinosaurs around. And with that level of preservation, they'd show up, right? And the possible owl pellets were weird, too, cuz we're talking millions of years before the earliest owls show up in the fossil record. And there weren't really any predators big enough to be making them, at least until now. Meet Jian changmaensis, the first non-avian dinosaur and possibly the apex predator of the Changma Basin. And yes, before you ask, all that was discovered was this limb. But, it was distinct enough to not only identify it as a non-avian dinosaur, but as a dromaeosaur, a raptor relative. Specifically, a microraptor relative. Microraptor being the now pretty much world-famous iridescent four-winged dromaeosaur. And yeah, Jian may not have been on the same scale as something like T-Rex or either one now. But, with a four-foot wingspan, it was definitely big enough to be terrorizing the birds of the ecosystem at the time. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.