The discovery of a dinosaur with unique wings could reveal new insights into the range of flight techniques animals were using around the time modern birds emerged.

Investigations of the fossil have shown it to belong to the Scansoriopterygidae group of dinosaurs, characterised by their small size and longer third finger than other theropods.

More remarkably the new species has a long, rod-like (styliform) bone in each wrist, not seen in any other dinosaur but with similarities to other flying and gliding animals including bats, flying squirrels and pterosaurs.

Feathers were found on the specimen but it lacked the large flight feathers of birds and their closest relatives. Instead, the key to any possible flight seems to be sheet-like soft tissue or membrane that connected the rods and other fingers.

It reminds us that the early history of flight was full of innovations, not all of which survived

The China-based scientists, who describe the new dinosaur in the journal Nature, have named it Yi qi, meaning "strange wing" in Mandarin. It is pronounced "ee chee".

A farmer discovered the only known remains in Hebei Province, China and the researchers confirmed its authenticity.

"We thought giving this animal a name meaning 'strange wing' was appropriate, because no other bird or dinosaur has a wing of the same kind," said lead author Prof Xu Xing, from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"We don’t know if Yi qi was flapping, or gliding, or both, but it definitely evolved a wing that is unique in the context of the transition from dinosaurs to birds."

The presence of wing membrane, and the fact that other animals with similar wrist structures to Yi qi use them for flight, led the authors to suggest that it too could fly.

However because the fossil was incomplete they could not tell what mode of flight Yi qi used, meaning their reconstruction of its wings may be controversial.

"Yi qi lived in the Jurassic, so it was a pioneer in the evolution of flight on the line to birds," co-author Prof Zheng Xiaoting, from Linyi University, said.

"It reminds us that the early history of flight was full of innovations, not all of which survived."

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