Early birdlike dinosaurs are thought to have lived lofty lives up within the timber. However a newly found creature had surprisingly lengthy legs that will have made for a life on the run.

The leggy birdlike dino (Fujianvenator prodigiosus) lived about 150 million years in the past through the Jurassic Interval, researchers report September 6 in Nature. That’s across the similar time as its distant cousin Archaeopteryx, one of many earliest identified birds (SN: 3/13/18).

“It appears fairly much like Archaeopteryx … besides the legs,” says paleontologist Min Wang of the Chinese language Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “Fujianvenator has actually, actually lengthy legs.”

Wang and colleagues recognized the creature as one of many earliest identified avialans — a bunch that break up off from the remainder of dinosaurs and ultimately grew to become birds. The primary avialans are key characters within the chicken origin story. However little is understood about them, Wang says, as a result of scant range of fossils discovered.

Early avialans found to date, together with Archaeopteryx, are typically short-limbed, apparently geared up for transferring by the timber. Pheasant-sized F. prodigiosus’ decrease leg bones have been twice so long as its thigh bones, a trait not discovered among the many different identified birdlike dinosaurs.

Entombed amid mudstones and shales in what’s now southeastern China, the creature’s bones have been found alongside fossils of aquatic and semiaquatic species. These clues point out that F. prodigiosus inhabited a swamplike setting. It in all probability dashed after prey like as we speak’s ostriches or waded by water like a primitive crane, Wang says.

The primary avialans weren’t all tree dwellers, he says. “It’s not the complete image.”