In Choa Saidan Shah miners dig coal with crude pick axes and load it onto donkeys to be transported to the surface earning a team of 4 workers around $10 to be split between them. 
 
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was built sort of like a biplane but probably did not fly as well, if at all. 
 
 Scientists on Tuesday described a fossil of a strange dinosaur that lived in China 125 million years ago which was covered in feathers, looked like it had two sets of wings and may have been able to glide. 
 
 The meat-eating creature, called Changyuraptor yangi, had exceptionally long tail feathers, the longest feathers of any dinosaur, at one foot in length (30 cm). It had feather-covered forelimbs akin to wings as well as legs covered in feathers in a way that gave the appearance of a second set of wings. 
 
 Changyuraptor is not considered a bird but rather a very bird-like dinosaur. It illustrates that it is not always easy to tell what is and is not a bird. It measured a bit more than 4 feet long (1.3 meters) and weighed roughly 9 pounds (4 kg). 
 
 If a person saw Changyuraptor, the reaction likely would be: "Hey! That is a weird-looking bird," according to paleontologist Alan Turner of Stony Brook University in New York, one of the researchers. 
 
 "So, think a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail," Turner added. 
 
 Scientists have identified a handful of these 'four-winged' dinosaurs, known as microraptorines. Changyuraptor is the largest. 
 
 Birds arose from small, feathered dinosaurs. Crow-sized Archaeopteryx, which lived about 150 million years ago, is considered the earliest known bird. But many dinosaurs before and after that had feathers and other bird-like characteristics. 
 
 "Changyuraptor is very, very similar to Archaeopteryx and other primitive birds. So are many other dinosaurs like Anchiornis and Pedopenna. But they have some traits that birds lack, and lack some traits that birds have," Turner added. 
 
 Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County paleontologist Luis Chiappe, who led the study, said Changyuraptor lived in a forested environment in a temperate climate, hunting birds, mammals, small reptiles and fish. 
 
 "Animals like Changyuraptor were probably not engaged in powered flight like modern birds. However, Changyuraptor and dinosaurs like it could flap their wings and certainly had large feathered surfaces on both their forelimbs and hind limbs," Turner said. 
 
 "So this does raise the possibility they could glide or 'fly' in a primitive sort of way. The way I like to think of it is: if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly," Turner added. 
 
 If Changyuraptor were able to become airborne, its long tail feathers may have helped reduce descent speed and enabled safe landings. "This helps explain how animals like Changyuraptor could engage in some form of aerial locomotion - flight, gliding, and/or controlled descents - despite their size," Turner added. 
 
 In birds today, feathers can serve multiple functions beyond flight, including display, species recognition and mating rituals. Turner said Changyuraptor's feathers also may have served multiple purposes. 
 
 China has become a treasure trove for feathered dinosaur fossils. Changyuraptor was unearthed in Liaoning Province in northeastern China. 
 
 The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. 
 
 (Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by James Dalgleish) ||||| "The 10,000 species of birds that live today -- from hummingbirds to ostriches -- are modern dinosaurs," Brusatte said. "They are dinosaurs in the same way that humans are mammals. The classic body plan of living birds -- feathers, wings, wishbones, air sacs extending into hollow bones -- did not evolve suddenly but was gradually assembled over tens of millions of years of evolution. But, when this body plan finally came together completely, it unlocked great evolutionary potential that allowed birds to evolve at a super-charged rate." "They underwent a burst of evolution early in their history, which eventually led to the 10,000 species alive today -- more than twice the number of mammals." Photos: Audubon Report Names Birds at Climate Risk 
 
 "The oldest birds, like Archaeopteryx that lived 150 million years ago in Germany, are very hard to distinguish from their closest dinosaurian relatives," Brusatte said. "Unlike living birds, they had teeth, sharp claws on their wings, and long tails." "Over the past two decades," he continued, "over 50 new species of Mesozoic birds have been discovered in northeastern China, in the same rock units as the famous 'feathered dinosaurs.' So many birds are preserved here because entire ecosystems were buried by volcanic eruptions, turning animals to stone like a dinosaur version of Pompeii." Tiny Feathered Dinosaur Found 
 
 Dromaeosaurids were "raptor dinosaurs" that include Velociraptor from "Jurassic Park" fame. These dinosaurs were pack hunters who wielded a sharp, hyper-extendable "killer claw" on their second toe. "One of the most recently discovered dromaeosaurids is Balaur, a poodle-sized terror from Romania which had not one, but two 'killer claws' on each foot." Velociraptor Inspires Fast Running Robot 
 
 "Troodontids were probably the smartest dinosaurs of all, as they had the largest brains relative to their body size of any dinosaur group," Brusatte said. "Most troodontids were small, fast-running dinosaurs that probably ate both meat and plants." Among the most recently discovered of this group are the small, feathered Anchiornis and Xiaotingia, which lived in China about 160 million years ago. "They look eerily similar to birds, so much so that some researchers think they could be primitive birds rather than troodontids with wings and feathers," Brusatte said. World's Earliest Bird Discovered 
 
 Oviraptorosaurs, were a group of small omnivores that were lightweight, lacked teeth and had tall, hollow crests on their skulls. The recently discovered Anzu -- the so-called " chicken from hell " -- came by its nickname honestly. It towered more than five feet tall, weighed more than 400 pounds, and was covered in a coat of feathers. 
 
 Alvarezsaurs were among the smallest dinosaurs of all, measuring just a few feet long and weighing less than 5 kilograms (10 pounds). "Some of them had only a single functional finger on their hand, which they probably used to prod deep into the nests of bugs, which were one of their main food sources," Brusatte said. New Dinosaur Bolsters Bird-Dino Connection 
 
 Brusatte describes therizinosaurs as "perhaps the weirdest theropods of all." "These were big, bulky, cumbersome dinosaurs that ate plants. They had fat barrel-shaped chests, stocky legs, and big claws on their arms," Brusatte said. For many years paleontologists argued about which group this dinosaur belonged to, only recently settling on theropods. This means they were fairly closely related to birds, despite their weird anatomy. Nests of Big-Clawed Dinosaurs Found in Mongolia 
 
 Ornithomimosaurs were theropods called "ostrich mimic" dinosaurs -- for a reason. "Like living ostriches, they could run fast on their long legs and used their sharp, toothless beaks to eat a varied diet of small prey, plants, and perhaps even small shrimps in the water just like living flamingos," Brusatte explained. "A recent find in Canada showed that not only were ornithomimosaurs feathered, but they also had complex feathers on their arms that would have formed something of a wing, although they couldn't fly." 
 
 "Some of the rarest theropods (two-legged carnivorous dinos) of all, compsognathids are represented by about half a dozen species," Brusatte said. "They were small, sleek meat-eaters which ate small prey like lizards." One of the more recent finds, Juravenator from Germany, is known from a nearly complete fossil. Dinosaurs That Loved the Nightlife 
 
 Paleontologists have just assembled the most comprehensive family tree of meat-eating dinosaurs. Published in the journal Current Biology, the family tree reveals how diverse carnivorous dinosaurs were and how birds eventually evolved from them. Tyrannosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus rex , are one key group on the meat-loving dino family tree. Lead author Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences told Discovery News, "The most iconic dinosaurs of all, tyrannosaurs were more than just the 13-meter-long (nearly 43 feet long), 5-ton monster predator T. rex ." "Tyrannosaurs were an ancient group that originated more than 100 million years before T. rex , and for almost all of their evolutionary history they were small carnivores not much bigger than a human in size." New T-Rex Tracks Add to Pack-Hunting Theory 
 
 Dinosaurs not only danced, but they also did so with such enthusiasm that they left behind fossilized footprints as evidence of their moves, a new paper by an international team of paleontologists reports. 
 
 Play Video Dinosaur Sex: How Did That Work? Dinosaurs ruled the planet for 130 million years, so clearly they knew how to perpetuate themselves, but scientists have not had much to go on, in terms of their exact mechanics for doing the deed. DCI 
 
 The discovery confirms prior speculation, based on dinosaur head crests and colorful feathers, that some dinosaurs engaged in mating displays that were similar to those of modern birds. The dancing dinos, according to the paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, were likely large theropods, meaning two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs. 
 
 “They were evidently very active and perhaps driven into frenzies by the excitement of the breeding season,” project leader Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado Denver, told Discovery News. 
 
 “This is typical of some bird species,” he continued. “The extensive scrape evidence suggests much high-energy activity. If small birds get excited when breeding, imagine what big theropods might have done!” 
 
 Lockley and his team found the fossilized dinosaur scrape marks in 100-million-year-old Dakota sandstone in western Colorado. Since the footprints could not be removed from the rocks without causing damage, the scientists recreated them in virtual 3-D, using a technique of layering photographs known as photogrammetry. Rubber molds and fiberglass copies of the footprints were also made and are now stored at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. 
 
 Various interpretations of the fossilized footprints were considered, such as whether or not dinosaurs made them while digging for food or marking territory. These were all discounted for multiple reasons, with only mating dance behavior providing the best explanation for the ancient prints. In fact, the marks closely match those created by dancing birds today, such as Atlantic puffins and ostriches. 
 
 The time and location of the prints indicate that they were made by Acrocanthosaurus, a dinosaur that grew close to 38 feet in length and weighed up to 6.8 short tons. Its rhythmic stomps and scratches, comprising what the researchers call a "scrape ceremony," must have reverberated for quite a distance. The dinosaur probably vocalized as it performed the ritualistic scraping and bobbing movements, as today’s birds do. ||||| "The 10,000 species of birds that live today -- from hummingbirds to ostriches -- are modern dinosaurs," Brusatte said. "They are dinosaurs in the same way that humans are mammals. The classic body plan of living birds -- feathers, wings, wishbones, air sacs extending into hollow bones -- did not evolve suddenly but was gradually assembled over tens of millions of years of evolution. But, when this body plan finally came together completely, it unlocked great evolutionary potential that allowed birds to evolve at a super-charged rate." "They underwent a burst of evolution early in their history, which eventually led to the 10,000 species alive today -- more than twice the number of mammals." Photos: Audubon Report Names Birds at Climate Risk 
 
 "The oldest birds, like Archaeopteryx that lived 150 million years ago in Germany, are very hard to distinguish from their closest dinosaurian relatives," Brusatte said. "Unlike living birds, they had teeth, sharp claws on their wings, and long tails." "Over the past two decades," he continued, "over 50 new species of Mesozoic birds have been discovered in northeastern China, in the same rock units as the famous 'feathered dinosaurs.' So many birds are preserved here because entire ecosystems were buried by volcanic eruptions, turning animals to stone like a dinosaur version of Pompeii." Tiny Feathered Dinosaur Found 
 
 Dromaeosaurids were "raptor dinosaurs" that include Velociraptor from "Jurassic Park" fame. These dinosaurs were pack hunters who wielded a sharp, hyper-extendable "killer claw" on their second toe. "One of the most recently discovered dromaeosaurids is Balaur, a poodle-sized terror from Romania which had not one, but two 'killer claws' on each foot." Velociraptor Inspires Fast Running Robot 
 
 "Troodontids were probably the smartest dinosaurs of all, as they had the largest brains relative to their body size of any dinosaur group," Brusatte said. "Most troodontids were small, fast-running dinosaurs that probably ate both meat and plants." Among the most recently discovered of this group are the small, feathered Anchiornis and Xiaotingia, which lived in China about 160 million years ago. "They look eerily similar to birds, so much so that some researchers think they could be primitive birds rather than troodontids with wings and feathers," Brusatte said. World's Earliest Bird Discovered 
 
 Oviraptorosaurs, were a group of small omnivores that were lightweight, lacked teeth and had tall, hollow crests on their skulls. The recently discovered Anzu -- the so-called " chicken from hell " -- came by its nickname honestly. It towered more than five feet tall, weighed more than 400 pounds, and was covered in a coat of feathers. 
 
 Alvarezsaurs were among the smallest dinosaurs of all, measuring just a few feet long and weighing less than 5 kilograms (10 pounds). "Some of them had only a single functional finger on their hand, which they probably used to prod deep into the nests of bugs, which were one of their main food sources," Brusatte said. New Dinosaur Bolsters Bird-Dino Connection 
 
 Brusatte describes therizinosaurs as "perhaps the weirdest theropods of all." "These were big, bulky, cumbersome dinosaurs that ate plants. They had fat barrel-shaped chests, stocky legs, and big claws on their arms," Brusatte said. For many years paleontologists argued about which group this dinosaur belonged to, only recently settling on theropods. This means they were fairly closely related to birds, despite their weird anatomy. Nests of Big-Clawed Dinosaurs Found in Mongolia 
 
 Ornithomimosaurs were theropods called "ostrich mimic" dinosaurs -- for a reason. "Like living ostriches, they could run fast on their long legs and used their sharp, toothless beaks to eat a varied diet of small prey, plants, and perhaps even small shrimps in the water just like living flamingos," Brusatte explained. "A recent find in Canada showed that not only were ornithomimosaurs feathered, but they also had complex feathers on their arms that would have formed something of a wing, although they couldn't fly." 
 
 "Some of the rarest theropods (two-legged carnivorous dinos) of all, compsognathids are represented by about half a dozen species," Brusatte said. "They were small, sleek meat-eaters which ate small prey like lizards." One of the more recent finds, Juravenator from Germany, is known from a nearly complete fossil. Dinosaurs That Loved the Nightlife 
 
 Paleontologists have just assembled the most comprehensive family tree of meat-eating dinosaurs. Published in the journal Current Biology, the family tree reveals how diverse carnivorous dinosaurs were and how birds eventually evolved from them. Tyrannosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus rex , are one key group on the meat-loving dino family tree. Lead author Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences told Discovery News, "The most iconic dinosaurs of all, tyrannosaurs were more than just the 13-meter-long (nearly 43 feet long), 5-ton monster predator T. rex ." "Tyrannosaurs were an ancient group that originated more than 100 million years before T. rex , and for almost all of their evolutionary history they were small carnivores not much bigger than a human in size." New T-Rex Tracks Add to Pack-Hunting Theory 
 
 Dinosaurs gradually began to die out at least 40 million years before the devastating asteroid impact killed the rest in a dramatic way about 66 million years ago, concludes an extensive new study. 
 
 The research, outlined in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to incorporate phylogenetic information — meaning how species are related to one another — when studying speciation and extinction in dinosaurs. 
 
 The data provides evidence that things went from really bad to worse for most dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds. 
 
 Top 10 Ways to Stop an Asteroid 
 
 Play Video Meet a Dino That Survived the Mass Extinction Its name might be a tongue-twister, but Leikupal Laticauda has vaulted into the upper reaches of dinosaur stardom. Why? Because it lived after almost nothing else did. 
 
 “Some dinosaurs definitely would have been instantly killed in the impact, those in the vicinity of the impact site for instance; others may have perished in the tsunami caused by the blast,” lead author Manabu Sakamoto of the University of Reading’s School of Biological Sciences told Discovery News. 
 
 He continued, “The majority of the remaining dinosaurs all over the rest of the world would have likely starved to death as vegetation died out owing to the layer of ash that blacked out the sky (nuclear winter).” 
 
 A model created by Sakamoto and colleagues Michael Benton and Chris Venditti found that most dinosaur populations were already declining as early as 48–53 million years before the asteroid impact, which left the massive Chicxulub crater in Mexico. They say that the Cretaceous Period was a time of extreme geological and environmental changes. 
 
 Meet The Top 10 Meat-Eating Dinos: Photos 
 
 “For instance,” Sakamoto said, “sea level was fluctuating, climate was shifting from a hot house to a global cooling, there were prolonged volcanic activities, and continents were breaking apart, establishing the main continents we have today.” 
 
 He explained that the supercontinent breakup would have resulted in less available land for dinosaurs to use for migration, which previously helped to fuel the evolution of new species. Climate change, both then and now, could induce major environmental and ecological shifts. 
 
 Sea level rise turned out to be more complex. Initially, it favored the evolution of more dinosaur species, but smaller land areas eventually restricted population growth. 
 
 Huge Croc Extinction Led to Dinosaur Domination 
 
 Our ancestors, the early mammals, could have posed a big threat to dinos as well. 
 
 “Another possibility is that mammals, which were small rodent-like creatures at that time, were in some way contributing to the dinosaur’s downfall,” Benton, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol, told Discovery News. “Recent studies show evidence that mammals were on the rise prior to the K-Pg (extinction) event, so this scenario would be consistent with our finding.” 
 
 Venditti, from the University of Reading, added that mammals might have outcompeted dinosaurs for resources, eaten their eggs, spread diseases or caused other problems for the once mighty dinos. 
 
 Aside from the dinosaur lineage that evolved to become birds, two other major groups of dinosaurs — the plant-eating hadrosaurs and ceratopsians — remained strong until the asteroid struck. Sakamoto explained that these dinos acquired specialized jaw structures that allowed them to process plant foods efficiently. 
 
 Paleontologist Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences said the new study is an impressive take on “a subject that has been studied to death.” 
 
 Medium-Sized Asteroid Hit Could Unleash Ice Age 
 
 "Cretaceous dinosaurs were evolving into fewer new species, and going extinct at a faster rate, than earlier dinosaurs,” said Brusatte. But he does not think that dinosaurs were doomed to extinction before 66 million years ago. 
 
 “The asteroid hit at a time when dinosaurs had already been around for a long time, and had already endured their really prolific periods of evolution,” Brusatte said. “But the way I see it, the dinosaur extinction still came down to the asteroid. No asteroid, no extinction." 
 
 There is an eerie footnote regarding lessons learned from the extinction of dinosaurs, and other animals that bit the dust after the asteroid hit. Any group of animals that is under a prolonged period of decline can be wiped out, should there be catastrophic event. 
 
 Sakamoto said, “This means that if some major catastrophe hits, then it is highly possible that whole groups of animals could be completely wiped off the face of the Earth.”
– Take the velociraptors made famous by Jurassic Park, make them a bit smaller, add feathers, then change the limbs to wings and you will have something resembling a newly discovered dinosaur species found in China. Researchers say Changyuraptor yangi, a carnivore that lived around 125 million years ago, has the longest feathers ever found outside birds, to which it is very closely related. It's a lot bigger than any other "four-winged" dinosaur species known, reports NBC News. Researchers compare the creature, which was around 4 feet long and weighed about 9 pounds, to "a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail" and say that while it probably couldn't fly the way modern birds do, it could flap its wings and the feathers would have helped it land safely despite its size. "So this does raise the possibility they could glide or 'fly' in a primitive sort of way," a paleontologist tells Reuters. "The way I like to think of it is: if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly." (Another newly discovered dinosaur had bony "wings" on its head.)