Powered flight among living things has been around for hundreds of millions of years. Dinosaurs, and their relatives the pterosaurs, figured out how to take to the skies long before their avian descendants today did. Now, a new species of dinosaur is shedding some light on the evolutionary path that lofted reptiles skyward.

The fossil, discovered in Liaoning Province in China and named Ambopteryx longibrachium, is actually notable for the fact that it seems to be an altogether different e