Newly Discovered Four-Winged Dinosaur Didn’t Need to Fly to Hunt Birds

Nautilus ↗·Literature & Philosophy·Level 3

The discovery of Jian changmaensis solved a mystery

4:00 PM CDT on June 5, 2026

What has four wings and can’t fly? Jian changmaensis, a newly described species of feathered dinosaur recently discovered in China.

But according to paleontologists, just because J. changmaensis wasn’t capable of powered flight doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fearsome predator. In fact, its relatively larger size and ability to glide made it the scourge of the skies (or treetops) 120 million years ago.

The specimen was discovered in the Xiagou Formation in China, a fossil-rich area littered with the remains of birds that lived alongside J. changmaensis. Many of the bones unearthed there had been pulverized into pellets similar to those owls leave behind, which hinted at a larger predator. Now, paleontologists believe they’ve found it in J. changmaensis.

“It’s the only dinosaur found at this site that wasn’t a bird, it was a carnivore, and it was much bigger than everything else that we’ve found there,” Jingmai O’Connor of Chicago’s Field Museum and author of a study describing the dinosaur said in a statement.

Per their analysis, J. changmaensis was a microraptor (related to the famed velociraptors of Jurassic Park), suggesting it would have had feathers on both its forelimbs and hind legs. But while microraptors tended to be as small as crows, J. changmaensis was on the larger side.

“Jian is one of the biggest microraptor specimens that has ever been found,” O’Connor said. “The piece of its upper arm bone that we have is about four inches long, so the entire dinosaur probably had something like a four-foot wingspan, around the size of a barn owl.”

Judging by the pellets it left behind, that impressive four-winged silhouette was likely the last thing many of the birds living in the area ever saw.

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Lead illustration by Lewis LaRosa, colorized by Jão Canola

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