WASHINGTON: About 120 million years ago in what is now northwestern China, many kinds of birds flocked to a lakeside ecosystem. This dense avian population would have offered a smorgasbord for a small and opportunistic carnivorous dinosaur. Researchers have now discovered fossils of a dinosaur that seems to fit the bill.

Scientists said they unearthed bones of a Cretaceous Period dinosaur about the size of a barn owl that was closely related to Velociraptor. The dinosaur, named Jian changmaensis, probably was covered with feathers, lived on the ground and in trees, and may have been able to glide like a flying squir­rel in ambush attacks against prey, they said.

“Jian would look like a small Velociraptor — the real Velociraptor, not the scaly thing in ‘Jurassic Park’ — but with long feathers on both the forelimbs and hindlimbs instead of just the former,” said paleontologist Matt Lamanna of Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, one of the leaders of the study published in the journal Annals of Carnegie Museum.

“I often describe Jian as a Velociraptor trying to be a flying squirrel — except, of course, that Jian was predatory and flying squirrels aren’t,” Lamanna said. Jian’s bones were found at a fossil locality in China’s Gansu Province known for its wealth of nicely preserved bird remains. Some of these fossils were broken bones crushed into pellets that resemble those coughed up by present-day owls after they have eaten prey like mice.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2026