This baby is being touted as the oldest known proto-bird.Wonderful in-depth discussion at the Dinosaur Mailing List Archive, including this bit by the incomparable Greg Paul:
It does not look like the authors of the new Anchiornis paper are pushing the idea that it was some sort of protoglider. In fact, its anatomy suggests it was not a protoflier, but more likely was in the early stages of loss of flight from an ancestor better developed for flight, a trend that would become better developed in later flightless troodonts. What are these features? Am not going to say because Iâm thinking of submitting a note (although I discuss the basic features expected in early neoglightless dinobirds in DA). Will tell science correspondents who are interested
GS Paul
...which implies there must have been fully flight capable bird ancestors at least 10,000,000 years before Archy.
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