Beijing (China): A new chapter in the early history of birds is published in Nature recently. The discovery of a bizarre feathered dinosaur from the Middle to Late Jurassic of China that is probably flightless adds complexity to our understanding so far.

The pigeon-sized creature lived a little before Archaeopteryx and is bird-like in many ways, including the presence of four very long ribbon-like tail feathers and a short tail. Fucheng Zhang and colleagues describe how it shows no sign of flight feathers as seen in other bird-like dinosaurs such as Microraptor. This new fossil adds yet more complexity to the early history of evolution from dinosaurs to birds.