Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew

by John Pickrell

The weird wonders that will follow The majority of China’s feathered dinosaurs have come from western Liaoning’s Yixian and Jiufotang formations – layers of rock containing a single evolving community of plants and animals known as the Jehol Biota. This dates from the Early Cretaceous period 120–125 million years ago. Yi qi instead comes from the Yanliao or Daohugou Biota and the Tiaojishan Formation of rocks from Hebei, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. The type of preservation and incredible fossils are similar to those of Jehol, but the rocks here are about 30 million years older, from around 153–165 million years ago during the Mid- to Late Jurassic.15 These rocks were also the source of Anchiornis, Xiaotingia, the other scansoriopterygids Epidexipteryx and Epidendrosaurus; a few other very bird-like feathered dinosaurs; and also pterosaurs, amphibians, lizards and mammals. Furthermore, because of the geographic overlap with Jehol and the fact that the fossils here are tens of millions of years older, palaeontologists have a very unusual opportunity to study changes in the make-up of the community over time and during a key period of dinosaur and bird evolution. And it’s very likely that exciting new finds are yet to come from the Yanliao Biota. Sullivan is betting on a string of strange species in the next few decades. ‘Some of them I would expect to be every bit as weird as Yi qi. We’re seeing a side of the Jurassic we’ve never had access to before, and I’m sure there are...