Complete fossil skeleton of carnivorous dinosaur. Oldest bird-like dinosaur solves long-standing mystery. A creature with pointed teeth, sharp claws and a confused identity has been shown once and for all to be a dinosaur and not a bird.
Haplocheirus sollers lived 15 million years before the first flying bird, Archaeopteryx, and supports the theory that birds evolved independently from bird-like dinosaurs.
A worker cleans the newly discovered fossil in China
Halopcherius Sollers lived 160 million years ago and has dispelled the myth that birds evolved from dinosaurs
An almost complete fossil skeleton of the 10-foot long dinosaur was unearthed by scientists during an expedition to the Gobi Desert in China in 2004.
Haplocheirus, which lived 160 million years ago, is the oldest known member of an oddball group of bird-like dinosaurs called alvarezsauroids.
Their most distinguishing feature was a single huge claw on each hand that may have been used for digging.
Alvarezsauroids are so bird-like that for many years, since their discovery in the 1920s, experts argued about whether they were really dinosaurs.
Many insisted the later alvarezsauroids, which were smaller than Haplocheirus, were actually flightless birds.
The new fossil settles the dispute, confirming their dinosaur identity without doubt, and also fills an important gap in knowledge about the evolution of birds.
Most scientists believe modern birds are direct descendants of meat-eating two-legged dinosaurs. But there is an alternative view, that birds evolved quite independently.
Professor Xu Xing (L) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Paleoanthropology and his assistant inspect the newly discovered fossil
Those who challenge the "dinobird" theory point to the fact that all the clearest examples of bird-like dinosaurs only appeared millions of years after the Archaeopteryx. Bird evolution had progressed a long way before they even existed.
Haplocheirus bucks this trend, since it lived long before the first bird. Researchers now believe the fossil shows birds and bird-like dinosaurs diverged in the Late Jurassic period, about 160 million years ago.
The structure of the newly discovered carnivorous dinosaur was released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences today
Scientists believe Haplocheirus represents a separate branch of the dinosaur and bird family tree.
Its ancestors were dinosaurs that went on to evolve into a number of groups, including one that still exists today as modern birds.
'It's like finding a great, great grandfather in your family which doubles the age of your family tree,' said Jonah Choiniere from Washington University. ( dailymail.co.uk )
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