text: In Choa Saidan Shah miners dig coal with crude pick axes and load it onto donkeys to be transported to the surface earning a team of 4 workers around $10 to be split between them. 
   
   WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was built sort of like a biplane but probably did not fly as well, if at all. 
   
   Scientists on Tuesday described a fossil of a strange dinosaur that lived in China 125 million years ago which was covered in feathers, looked like it had two sets of wings and may have been able to glide. 
   
   The meat-eating creature, called Changyuraptor yangi, had exceptionally long tail feathers, the longest feathers of any dinosaur, at one foot in length (30 cm). It had feather-covered forelimbs akin to wings as well as legs covered in feathers in a way that gave the appearance of a second set of wings. 
   
   Changyuraptor is not considered a bird but rather a very bird-like dinosaur. It illustrates that it is not always easy to tell what is and is not a bird. It measured a bit more than 4 feet long (1.3 meters) and weighed roughly 9 pounds (4 kg). 
   
   If a person saw Changyuraptor, the reaction likely would be: "Hey! That is a weird-looking bird," according to paleontologist Alan Turner of Stony Brook University in New York, one of the researchers. 
   
   "So, think a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail," Turner added. 
   
   Scientists have identified a handful of these 'four-winged' dinosaurs, known as microraptorines. Changyuraptor is the largest. 
   
   Birds arose from small, feathered dinosaurs. Crow-sized Archaeopteryx, which lived about 150 million years ago, is considered the earliest known bird. But many dinosaurs before and after that had feathers and other bird-like characteristics. 
   
   "Changyuraptor is very, very similar to Archaeopteryx and other primitive birds. So are many other dinosaurs like Anchiornis and Pedopenna. But they have some traits that birds lack, and lack some traits that birds have," Turner added. 
   
   Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County paleontologist Luis Chiappe, who led the study, said Changyuraptor lived in a forested environment in a temperate climate, hunting birds, mammals, small reptiles and fish. 
   
   "Animals like Changyuraptor were probably not engaged in powered flight like modern birds. However, Changyuraptor and dinosaurs like it could flap their wings and certainly had large feathered surfaces on both their forelimbs and hind limbs," Turner said. 
   
   "So this does raise the possibility they could glide or 'fly' in a primitive sort of way. The way I like to think of it is: if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly," Turner added. 
   
   If Changyuraptor were able to become airborne, its long tail feathers may have helped reduce descent speed and enabled safe landings. "This helps explain how animals like Changyuraptor could engage in some form of aerial locomotion - flight, gliding, and/or controlled descents - despite their size," Turner added. 
   
   In birds today, feathers can serve multiple functions beyond flight, including display, species recognition and mating rituals. Turner said Changyuraptor's feathers also may have served multiple purposes. 
   
   China has become a treasure trove for feathered dinosaur fossils. Changyuraptor was unearthed in Liaoning Province in northeastern China. 
   
   The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. 
   
   (Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by James Dalgleish) ||||| The largest "four-winged" dinosaur known has been found, and this predator has the longest feathers yet outside of birds, researchers say. This new finding yields insights on how dinosaurs may have flown, the scientists added. 
   
   The 125-million-year-old feathered dinosaur, named Changyuraptor yangi, sported feathers over its body, including its arms and legs, which made it look as if it had two pairs of wings. Its fossil was unearthed in 2012 in Liaoning province in northeastern China, which has been the center of a surge of discoveries of feathered dinosaurs over the last decade. 
   
   "The vast majority of feathered dinosaurs in Liaoning are collected by farmers who live there," said study author Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist and director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 
   
   The newfound dinosaur is a microraptorine, a group of predatory, feathered dinosaurs related to Velociraptor and other well-known raptor dinosaurs. Analysis of the microscopic structure of this fossil's bones reveal it was a fully grown adult — a younger specimen's bones would have signs they were still developing. 
   
   "Microraptorines are thought to be very close cousins of birds, sharing a common raptor ancestor," Chiappe told Live Science. "It's not known yet whether a four-wing body is something unique to microraptorines, or something the common ancestor of birds and microraptorines had, that was later lost in the bird lineage." [Image Gallery: Dinosaur Fossils] 
   
   The researchers estimate 4-foot-long (1.2 meter) Changyuraptor weighed about 9 lbs. (4 kilograms), making it the largest four-winged dinosaur found yet, and at least 60 percent larger than the largest microraptorine specimen found previously, Chiappe said. 
   
   When Changyuraptor was alive, the area in which it lived "was a broad peninsula or wedge into the ocean, with volcanoes," Chiappe said. 
   
   - Charles Choi, Live Science 
   
   This is a condensed version of a report from LiveScience. Read the full report. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. 
   
   Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
target: – Take the velociraptors made famous by Jurassic Park, make them a bit smaller, add feathers, then change the limbs to wings and you will have something resembling a newly discovered dinosaur species found in China. Researchers say Changyuraptor yangi, a carnivore that lived around 125 million years ago, has the longest feathers ever found outside birds, to which it is very closely related. It's a lot bigger than any other "four-winged" dinosaur species known, reports NBC News. Researchers compare the creature, which was around 4 feet long and weighed about 9 pounds, to "a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail" and say that while it probably couldn't fly the way modern birds do, it could flap its wings and the feathers would have helped it land safely despite its size. "So this does raise the possibility they could glide or 'fly' in a primitive sort of way," a paleontologist tells Reuters. "The way I like to think of it is: if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly." (Another newly discovered dinosaur had bony "wings" on its head.)