A newly discovered species of birdlike dinosaur could dramatically alter our understanding of how birds and other flying creatures evolved.

A1 Birdlike Dinosaur Is Found A team of Argentine paleontologists reported finding what appears to be the most birdlike dinosaur ever found.

Rather it showed that among the most birdlike dinosaurs known as coelurosaurs plant eating was a common way of life.

Scientists have uncovered a huge surprise in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China: the fossil skeleton of an unusually robust birdlike dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago.

The differences suggest that the newfound animals were an intermediate step in evolution between primitive coelurosaurs, a group of birdlike dinosaurs, and tyrannosaurs.

The latter was a birdlike dinosaur with feathers, which has been considered a critical link in the evolution of reptiles to birds.

Ornithologists focused on the possibility that this was only a birdlike dinosaur, not a line of dinosaurs evolving into birds.

On the ground, a small birdlike dinosaur, Mei long, is sleeping or resting in birdlike repose.

Dinosaurs and birds have many features in common, but archaeopteryx, a very early bird, appeared 150 million years ago - some 80 million years before the first really birdlike dinosaurs appeared.

Other recent discoveries of birdlike dinosaurs and dinosaurlike birds have encouraged support for the theory of a dinosaur-bird ancestral link.