A stunning fossil from China is changing how scientists think about flight. The 57-centimetre-long dinosaur had feathers, wings, and many bird-like features.

Researchers named the new species Norellraptor barsboldi. It lived in Liaoning province between 145 million and 100 million years ago.

A farmer found the fossil near Lamadong town. It was donated to a museum at Hebei GEO University in 2023. The skeleton is almost complete, with plumage preserved.

The dinosaur belongs to the microraptorines, small meat-eating dinosaurs with feathers on their limbs. It was about three years old when it died.

The team compared 194 anatomical changes across the family tree. About 30 percent of the changes also evolved in the bird lineage. But they appeared in a different order.

This suggests flight evolved more than once. The study by Andrea Cau, Qiang Ji, and Xuri Wang was published in Nature Communications on September 29.

The species is named after palaeontologists Mark Allen Norell and Rinchen Barsbold.