Four-winged Chinese dinosaur is named Changyuraptor yangi

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A complete skeleton of this feathered dinosaur was first found in 2012 in Liaoning province in China, after which it was subjected to paleontological research; now it has finally been named Changyuraptor yangi. 'Chang yu' is Chinese for 'long feather', while 'yangi' refers to Professor Yang Yandong of Bohai University.
Changyuraptor yangi is placed in the Microraptorinae subfamily within the Dromaeosaurid family, a family that also includes such famous sickle-toed predators like Deinonychus and Velociraptor.

This fossil find is significant because it was previously believed that the relatively small size of the Microraptorines was key to any ability toward flight or gliding; Changyuraptor is significantly larger at 1.3 metres.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/15/largest-four-winged-dinosaur-changyuraptor-yangi

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/science/changyuraptor-large-species-of-flying-dinosaur-is-discovered.html?_r=0

Why don't the chinesses use greek words, like the rest of the world?

Because 'Macropteryx' was taken, and you can be a lot more concise with Chinese words.

This is how we get such lovely Stegosaurid genera like 'Huayangosaurus', 'Tuojiangosaurus', and 'Wuerhosaurus'.

Thanks for the link to the article. Have copied and pasted the article and link into my dinosaur article scrapbook!

I've been in love with dinosaurs my whole life, and so new discoveries like this never fail to excite me.

There was a PBS show devoted to a combined team of American, and Chinese, scientists testing a model of smaller similar cousin of this critter (also with long feathers on its ankles) for aerodynamics.

In the five times that aviation was invented on earth (once by man, and four times by nature) in three cases aviation went trough a four winged "biplane" phase.

Two hundred million years before the dinosaurs flight was first invented by the insects. And the earliest flying insects all had four wings (dragonflies, and mayflies). Later models (like bees, and houseflies) had the second pair of wings reduced to tiny little organs (almost microscopic) vital for stabilizing but no longer used for lift.

And now we are finding these feathered transitional dinosaur-birds with a second pair of airfoils on their ankles.

Pterosaurs were contemporary with these protobirds, and already ruled the sky. A fortnight after the dinosaurs were finally wiped out a group of mammals took to the night sky, and became the bats. Some species of both pterosaurs, and modern bats, have wing webbing between their toes. But I dont know of any with more than two actual wings.

And finally humans came along and figured out how to build heavier than air aircraft at the dawn of the 20th Centurey- the earliest of which were biplanes, and triplanes ( recapping the previous evolution of both birds, and of insect flight).