Ancient flying dragon discovered in China

March 21, 2007

Chinese scientists say they've found the remains of a small "flying dragon" that lived around the time of the dinosaurs.

The London Telegraph says the six-inch long skeleton of the Gliding Lizard fossil features "elongated ribs that helped to spread a wing-like membrane for gliding."

A report by Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleonanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says the unusual arrangement is found today only in the dragon lizards of southeast Asia.

The fossil of insect eating reptile was found in the Liaoning Province of northeastern China.

Rate this story - 3.1 /5 (94 votes)

rank
1
2
3
4
5

view popular

Other News

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin (AP)

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin (Update)

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Nov 20, 2009 | 2.1 / 5 (25) | 23

(AP) -- A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading ...

Museum: Galileo's fingers, tooth are found

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Nov 21, 2009 | 4 / 5 (1) | 6

(AP) -- Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum ...

New insights into the life of the Maya

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Nov 16, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (15) | 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ancient artifacts are almost always concerned with rich and powerful religious and political leaders, but new excavations of an ancient Maya site have unearthed a pyramid decorated with murals ...

Three of a kind: Revealing language’s universal essence

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

Nov 20, 2009 | 3.9 / 5 (11) | 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- On the surface, English, Japanese, and Kinande, a member of the Bantu family of languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have little in common. It is not just that the vocabularies ...

Only tax increase can cure Illinois budget woes, study says

Other Sciences / Economics

Nov 18, 2009 | 1 / 5 (1) | 3

Tax increases are the only solution to a widening budget crisis that a new study says has landed Illinois among the nation's most financially troubled states, a soon-to-be-released report by a team of University of Illinois ...