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Dubbed Ambopteryx longibrachium, the blue jay-sized theropod lived 163 million years ago during the Jurassic period. Its wings were made of a soft membrane attached to long arm bones which, when spread, resembled those of a bat. ..." The researchers first thought it was a bird when they saw it in the rock, but after they dug it out, it became clear that Ambopteryx was a dinosaur. The researchers aren’t sure exactly how the dinosaur, which also had feathers, looked as it took flight. It couldn’t flap its wings, so it’s believed the creatures would simply glide. According to the...

About 66 million years after two dinosaurs died apparently locked in battle on the plains of modern-day Montana, an unusual fight over who owns the entangled fossils has become a multimillion-dollar issue that hinges on the legal definition of “mineral.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the “Dueling Dinosaurs” located on private land are minerals both scientifically and under mineral rights laws. The fossils belong both to the owners of the property where they were found and two brothers who kept two-thirds of the mineral rights to the land once owned by their father, a...

Dinosaur fossils don't come much more impressive than this. With 98 per cent of its skeleton preserved, this young predatory theropod from southern Germany may be the most complete dinosaur ever found. Oliver Rauhut, curator of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, announced the find yesterday. Although Chinese bird and dinosaur fossils are famed for delicate details such as their feathers, they don't match this 72-centimetre-long theropod in terms of clarity and completeness of preservation. The young dinosaur has been dated at 135 million years old, putting it in the early Cretaceous, but it has yet...

SALT LAKE CITY - Fossils discovered in southern Utah are from a new species of birdlike dinosaur that resembled a 7-foot-tall brightly colored turkey and could run up to 25 mph, scientists said Tuesday. Fossils of the meat-eater's hand-like claw and foot were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near the Arizona border, giving paleontologists reason to believe some dinosaurs known as raptors roamed from Canada to northern New Mexico about 75 million years ago. Much smaller variations of the dinosaur had been found previously in Montana, South Dakota and the Canadian province of Alberta. "This is the southernmost...

A dinosaur that died just before it was about to lay two eggs has been found by an international team of scientists. The creature, which lived 65-98 million years ago, was discovered in China's Jiangxi Province. The fossilised remains comprise little more than a pelvis with the shelled eggs still viewable in the body cavity. Tamaki Sato and colleagues tell Science magazine the dinosaur's reproductive system shares similarities with both primitive reptiles and modern birds. The animal was probably a theropod; the name describes a broad group of bipedal, largely carnivorous dinosaurs which many scientists believe gave rise to birds....