Tiny feathered dinosaur discovered in China hunted ancient birds like a flying squirrel

One hundred and twenty million years before the present, a feathered predator no larger than a barn owl stalked the lakeshores of what is now northwestern China, hunting birds that were themselves still wearing the evolutionary novelty of flight. Paleontologists have named this creature Jian changmaensis — a Velociraptor relative that glided on feathered limbs and left behind crushed bone pellets much as modern owls do today. Its discovery reminds us that the line between dinosaur and bird was never a clean boundary, but a long, blurred threshold crossed by many creatures who lived and vanishe