More than 160 million years ago, the forests of ancient China were home to a bizarre predator: a tiny dinosaur that glided from tree to tree with leathery, bat-like wings. The newfound fossil, unveiled today in the journal Nature, is just the second feathered dinosaur found with signs of large membranes on its wings. Fitting, then, that the animal's newly assigned genus name is Ambopteryx: Latin for “both wings.”

“The most exciting thing, for me, is that it shows that some dinosaurs evolved very different structures to become volant,” or capable of some form of flight, says lead study author Min Wang, a paleontologist at China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

“Before the discovery of Yi qi, every