New bird-like dinosaur discovery

This video says about itself:

Synchrotron sheds light on the amphibious lifestyle of a new raptorial dinosaur

6 December 2017

An exceptionally well-preserved dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia unites an unexpected combination of features that defines a new group of semi-aquatic predators related to Velociraptor. Detailed 3D synchrotron analysis allowed an international team of researchers to present the bizarre 75 million-year-old predator, named Halszkaraptor escuilliei, in Nature.

From Nature:

Synchrotron scanning reveals amphibious ecomorphology in a new clade of bird-like dinosaurs

06 December 2017

Abstract

Maniraptora includes birds and their closest relatives among theropod dinosaurs^1,2,3,4,5.

During the Cretaceous period, several maniraptoran lineages diverged from the ancestral coelurosaurian bauplan and evolved novel ecomorphologies, including active flight², gigantism³, cursoriality⁴ and herbivory⁵. Propagation X-ray phase-contrast synchrotron microtomography of a well-preserved maniraptoran from Mongolia, still partially embedded in the rock matrix, revealed a mosaic of features, most of them absent among non-avian maniraptorans but shared by reptilian and avian groups with aquatic or semiaquatic ecologies^{6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14}. This new theropod, Halszkaraptor escuilliei gen. et sp. nov., is related to other enigmatic Late Cretaceous maniraptorans from Mongolia^15,16 in a novel clade at the root of Dromaeosauridae¹⁷. This lineage adds an amphibious ecomorphology to those evolved by maniraptorans: it acquired a predatory mode that relied mainly on neck hyperelongation for food procurement, it coupled the obligatory bipedalism of theropods with forelimb proportions that may support a swimming function, and it developed postural adaptations convergent with short-tailed birds.