Feathered dinosaurs from Liaoning Province, in northeastern China, have revolutionized our understanding of the connection between birds and their closest relatives. Most were covered with simple hairlike filaments, but a handful had wings and tails consisting of feathers similar to those of present-day birds, with central shafts and barbs.

The dinosaur shown above, a new species related to Velociraptor, is the largest yet unearthed with bird-like feathers. Its skeleton, below, was nearly complete upon discovery. It was curated at the Jinzhou Paleontological Museum and studied by scientists from the University of Edinburgh and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.

More than five feet long, the dinosaur had an orderly sequence of vaned coverts, primaries, and secondaries, but its arms were short and it probably did not fly.

“It may be,” write paleontologists Junchang Lü and Stephen L. Brusatte, “that such large wings comprised of multiple layers of feathers were useful for display purposes, and possibly even evolved for this reason and not for flight.”

A version of this article appeared in the October 2015 issue of BirdWatching.

Dinosaur family tree gives fresh insight into rapid rise of birds.

50 million years of dinosaur shrinking led to today’s birds.

Read our review of “Flying Dinosaurs” (2014), a book about recently discovered feathered dinosaurs.

 

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Originally Published August 4, 2015