Revealing a 5m tall dinosaur hybrid monster in China

 Strange creature in Fujian - China looks a bit like an ostrich but is a dinosaur, described as "more horrifying than the movie Jurassic Park".

According to Sci-News, an international paleontological research team discovered a series of fossilized avian dinosaur footprints at the Longxiang fossil site in Fujian province - China.

Among them, the smaller fossil footprints are 11 cm long and belong to a known dinosaur called Velociraptorichnus .

But besides that, there is another giant footprint 36 cm long, revealing a completely new species of dragon.

Graphic image depicting the new dinosaur species (left) and the fossils that have been found - (Photo: Yingliang/iSCIENCE)

Footprint fossils may look less monumental than bone fossils, but they are extremely valuable to archeology, especially when describing new species that belong to a known group.

The footprints not only reveal the animal's rough shape, but are also 3D "negative films" that describe the external appearance, including the skin, muscle fibers. and help scientists reconstruct them. Record how the animal moved on the ground, and from there infer the behavior of the species.

In this case, perfectly preserved footprints helped China add a new species name to the Troodontid family - or "notched dragon bird" - as Fujianipus yingliangi.

According to an article published in the journal iScience , this ornithosaur and its cousins ​​belong to a larger family called deinonychosaurs, which are a group of transitional creatures between dinosaurs and birds.

So, like other ostriches, Fujianipus yingliangi has a body somewhat like an ostrich with small wings and strong legs, but still has teeth and is still a dinosaur.

It is also an apex predator in the area.

'It was about 5m tall with legs 1.8m long, far exceeding the size of the raptors depicted in Jurassic Park. Imagine something like that coming at top speed' - described Dr. Anthony Romilio from the University of Queensland (Australia), a member of the research team.

To identify the new species, the tracks were compared to other known two-toed dinosaur tracks across Asia, North and South America and Europe.

Most ornithosaurs are found in high latitudes, near the North Pole, but new discoveries in Fujian show that this group of dinosaurs dispersed farther south than imagined.

The research also included the participation of scientists from China University of Geosciences, Xiamen University, Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, Fujian Geological Survey Institute (China), School of University of Colorado in Denver and College of Charleston (USA).