The tiny dinosaur that rewrote the story of flight

A farmer in Liaoning province dug up a 57-centimeter fossil of a creature that lived more than 100 million years ago — a four-winged microraptor with feathers on all four limbs. An international team named it Norellraptor barsboldi, and its existence suggests birds and their dinosaur cousins evolved flight more than once, independently. The fossil, described in Nature Communications, is barely longer than a ruler, with razor claws for hunting early mammals and lizards.