Largest bird like dinosaur unearthed in China

Beijing: A team of palaeontologists working in China have unearthed the fossil remains of the winged dinosaur, a close cousin of the Velociraptor, which was made famous by the "Jurassic Park" film series. Named Zhenyuanlong suni, the feathered dinosaur is the largest ever discovered to have a well-preserved set of bird-like wings.

"It is a dinosaur with huge wings made up of quill pen feathers, just like an eagle or a vulture. The movies have it wrong - this is what Velociraptor would have looked like too," said Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh's School of Geosciences who co-authored the study. Its wings, which are very short compared with other dinosaurs in the same family, consisted of multiple layers of large feathers.

The team found that the species' feathers were complex structures made up of fine branches stemming from a central shaft. Although larger feathered dinosaurs have been identified before, none have possessed such complex wings made up of quill pen-like feathers, the team says. The newly-discovered species grew to more than five feet in length.