China has yielded a number of important fossils over the past several years, and researchers recently uncovered fossils of a small feathered dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic age. Yi qi, which comes from the Mandarin for “strange wing,” is being assigned it to a group of diminutive, feathered meat-eaters known as scansoriopterygids. Unlike most other dinosaurian gliders and proto-birds, researchers believe it had both feathers positioned on its long arms and fingers and a membrane-like soft tissue that would have given it bat-like wings. While Yi qi isn’t being considered a direct ancestor of birds, its unique wings are being considered a surprising example of convergent evolution.

“This is refreshingly weird,” said Daniel Ksepka of the Bruce Museum “Paleontologists will be thinking about Yi qi for a long time, and we can surely expect some interesting research into the structure and function of the wing.”

While researchers once considered dinosaurs and pterosaurs and their respective feathery or leathery wings mutually exclusive, Yi qi challenges that way of thinking.

“It definitely evolved a wing that is unique in the context of the transition from dinosaurs to birds,” said lead author Xu Xing, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing.

Unfortunately, due to the incomplete preservation of the wings and the uncertain position of the long wrist bone, researchers have no way of knowing whether the dinosaur had a very broad wing or a narrow one, or if it had the muscles and joints needed for powered flight.

“We don’t know if Yi qi was flapping, or gliding, or both,” wrote Xu Xing in the latest issue of the journal Nature.