China has unearthed the fossil of a two-legged carnivorous dinosaur that lived 160 million years ago and which researchers have identified as the earliest known member of a long lineage that includes birds. The “Haplocheirus sollers” had a long, narrow skull, many small teeth and powerful biceps and forelimbs, which enabled it to hunt primitive lizards, small mammals and reptiles. The individual, believed to be a young adult when it died, had a long tail and a total body length of between 190 and 230 cm. (6 feet 2 inches to 7 feet 6 inches), the researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Science. It was found in orange mudstone beds in the Junggar Basin in China's far western Xinjiang region. This species belongs to the family of Alvarezsauridae – a bizarre group of bird-like dinosaurs – and its discovery pushes the fossil record of this family back by 60 million years into the Late Jurassic period (145 million to 161 million years ago).
