Fossils of a dinosaur with batlike wings have recently been discovered in China and its estimated to have lived about 160 million years ago (making it is a possible contender to be the first type of bird). Given the name – Yi qi (pronounced yee-chee), the dinosaur belongs to the scansoriopterygids – a faction of dinosaurs mainly native to China. The word Yi Qi means ‘strange wing’ in Mandarin.
“We thought giving this animal a name meaning ‘strange wing’ was appropriate, because no other bird or dinosaur has a wing of the same kind,” Xu Xing, a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and one of the lead researchers on the paper.
One can compare the anatomy of this dinosaur to flying squirrel and bats. Kevin Padian, a University of California-Berkeley paleontologist (who peer reviewed the research) insists that the creature had feathers and membranous tissue. He also stated that the wings most likely did not flap and chances are that it never took flight – this is just a speculation.
“We’re left with a quandary. The animal doesn’t show any tendency to fly, but we don’t have any other idea of what (the bone) could be so it seems very strange,” said Padian.
The overall size of the Qi Yi is yet to be determined as not all parts were recovered. However, it is being presumed to be a fairly small creature as the skull measure roughly around 4 centimeters.
“The importance of this fossil is that it shows that we’re scratching the service on how weird and diverse dinosaurs were,” he said.