The first dive-bomber

Is it a bird? Is it a bat? No, it's a dinosaur that used four wings and a feathered tail to dive-bomb prey.

Scientists are thrilled by the discovery of a 1.2m changyuraptor, which appears to have crash-landed in a lake about 125million years ago. Its fossilised remains were dug up by a team including a Cape Town professor. Details were published this week in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

It confirms the view that changyuraptors were the biggest known four-winged dinosaurs. They ruled the sky - together with their toothy pterodactyl cousins - long before the evolution of birds.

The latest specimen, called Changyuraptor yangi, was found, with a full set of feathers cloaking its entire body, two years ago in the Liaoning province in northeastern China. It is the biggest of its kind.

Of particular interest is its extra-long tail feathers that might explain how such a relatively large animal managed to stay airborne.

UCT professor and palaeobiologist Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan analysed the bones of the specimen and was able to estimate its age, giving the team a better idea of what it was looking at.

Chinsamy-Turan said: "Dinosaurs have such a big range of body sizes that, if you find a small animal, you might not know if you are looking at a juvenile or a small-bodied adult. In our case it was a small-bodied dinosaur but a large individual. Here we have a fairly large dinosaur that has these long feathers that probably enabled it to overcome gravity."

She said dinosaur flight was different to bird flight.

"About 10 years ago predatory dinosaurs were discovered with wings on both their forelimbs and hind limbs. These recent disco-veries pose an enigma as to how these microraptorine dinosaurs used their four wings to fly."

The team proposed that the unusually long tail (30cm) also helped changyuraptors land.

"It is fascinating to realise that there are these different ways that animals managed to become airborne," Chinsamy-Turan said.