Jul 15, 2014 02:53 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Scientists have discovered a new dinosaur apparently capable of flight with four wings and unusually long tail feathers.

According to USA Today, a group of paleontologists discovered the Changyuraptor yangi from a pristinely kept fossil found in northeastern China. In their study published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers said the dinosaur had feathers on its wings and on its hind legs.

C. yangi's sharp teeth and claws indicated it was a carnivore, but the researchers could not distinguish its precise diet. However, the dino-bird apparently had fish and birds in its stomach, based on the fossil. The new dinosaur's second part of its name is based on the Chinese financier related to the project and the first part means "long-feathered raptor."

"I've worked for over 20 years in China, and I've never seen anything like this," study co-author Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, told USA Today. "It was absolutely stunning to see how perfectly preserved these feathers were and how long they were... essentially one-fourth the length of the animal."

The Changyuraptor was the largest of its kind and, at four feet and nine pounds, was 60 percent longer than the next-biggest four-winged dinosaur. The researchers guessed the dinosaur was capable of at least gliding but could not determine if the dinosaur was able to take off from the ground.

"The new fossil documents that dinosaur flight was not limited to very small animals but to dinosaurs of more substantial size," Chiappe said in a press release. "Clearly far more evidence is needed to understand the nuances of dinosaur flight, but Changyuraptor is a major leap in the right direction."

USA Today reported a week ago on a team of researchers who published a study on a large seagull-like bird. With a wing span of 20 to 24 feet, the bird was comparable in size to a fighter jet or, as the researchers said, to a dragon on "Game of Thrones."

Unlike the massive creature, the Changyuraptor was a dinosaur but had several bird-like traits ahead of their time.

"Numerous features that we have long associated with birds in fact evolved in dinosaurs long before the first birds arrived on the scene," study co-author Dr. Alan Turner, of Stony Brook University, said in the release. "This includes things such as hollow bones, nesting behavior, feathers... and possibly flight."

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