For many years it was believed that dinosaurs were covered in scales, which is why artists portrayed them as huge reptiles. However, in recent years, researchers have begun to uncover more and more evidence that the inhabitants of ancient Earth were feathered creatures. Apart from them, it turns out, evolution also created "experimental" species that did not live long - the recently discovered dinosaur Ambopteryx longibrachium, for example, had wings covered with skin.
This type of ancient creatures belonged to the family of scansoriopterigids - small dinosaurs that vaguely resemble parrots or bats. The body length of Ambopteryx longibrachium, which lived about 163 million years ago in the territory of the modern Chinese province of Liaoning, was only 33 centimeters. With all this, its weight was about 200 grams.
Unlike other members of the family, the discovered species did not have feathered wings. Instead, he had long, thin fingers, along which membranes stretched - the same structure of the wings can be observed in modern bats. Researchers are confident that such wings did not have an evolutionary continuation, and in this natural experiment, the feathered wing coating won.
The most interesting thing is that this is not the first dinosaur with such wings. In 2015, Chinese paleontologists found another representative of scansoriopterigids, and gave it the name Yi qi. But the dinosaur found definitely does not belong to the same species, because there are noticeable differences in their skeleton. In particular, we are talking about wider and longer forelimbs and a short tail with fused vertebrae at the end.
Ramis Ganiev