An exquisite fossil of a fierce little Chinese dinosaur dubbed the "dancing dragon" that lived 120 million years ago — an older cousin of the Velociraptor — is showing scientists that feathers grew differently on dinosaurs than on birds.
The two-legged Cretaceous Period dinosaur, called Wulong bohaiensis, was a bantamweight meat-eater — a bit bigger than a crow — residing in a lakeside environment, researchers said. It possessed a scaly face, a mouth full of pointy teeth and one particularly dangerous toe claw, and probably hunted small mammals, lizards, birds and fish.
Wulong's fossil, unearthed in Liaoning Province in northeastern China, includes a complete skeleton as well as soft tissues like feathers rarely preserved in such detail. Its long arms and legs each had sets of feathers that looked similar to those on bird wings, while most of the rest of its body was covered by fluffy filaments.