A team of paleontologists from China and Canada has discovered the fossils of a gigantic, previously unknown dinosaur with feathers—the largest known feathered animal ever to exist. The three 125-million-year-old fossils, which are mostly complete, were found in Liaoning Province in northeast China, the New York Times reports. This meat-eating dinosaur was at least 30-feet long and weighed a ton and a half. The species name—partly in Latin and partly in Mandarin—is Yutyrannus huali, which translates to “beautiful feathered tyrant.” The animal is 40 times bigger than any other feathered dinosaur that’s yet been found, and was probably “downright shaggy,” according to Canadian paleontologist Corwin Sullivan, who was on the team that discovered it. The creatures would have been downy, he added, with their feathers looking “more like hair than the feathers of modern birds,” which may have protected them from cooler temperatures. They would have been a fearsome predator, Sullivan added: “I wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley.”
A team of paleontologists from China and Canada has discovered the fossils of a gigantic, previously unknown dinosaur with feathers—the largest known feathered animal ever to exist. The three 125-million-year-old fossils, which are mostly complete, were found in Liaoning Province in northeast China, the New York Times reports. This meat-eating dinosaur was at least 30-feet long and weighed a ton and a half. The species name—partly in Latin and partly in Mandarin—is Yutyrannus huali, which translates to “beautiful feathered tyrant.” The animal is 40 times bigger than any other feathered dinosaur that’s yet been found, and was probably “downright shaggy,” according to Canadian paleontologist Corwin Sullivan, who was on the team that discovered it. The creatures would have been downy, he added, with their feathers looking “more like hair than the feathers of modern birds,” which may have protected them from cooler temperatures. They would have been a fearsome predator, Sullivan added: “I wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley.”