Now National Geographic magazine plans to publish a note in its March issue saying that CT scans of the fossil appeared to confirm Xu's observations and had ''revealed anomalies'' in the reconstruction, said National Geographic Society spokeswoman Barbara Moffet. She added that more information was needed. He said he has found another fossil, in a private collection in China, that contains the mirror image of the supposed tail of the Archaeoraptor. This is a completely new dinosaur. Xu, of China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, said in an interview.
Research is still ongoing.
It's still totally one of a kind, first time anyone has seen anything like this before,'' said Czerkas, who with his wife, Sylvia, runs the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah. Xu said he could not disclose further details about his find until he finished a research article for Nature magazine to be published later this year. He has invited U.S. scientists to visit Beijing to examine his find. The fossils were unearthed in western Liaoning province, a barren, semi-desert region about 260 miles northeast of Beijing that is a treasure trove for paleontologists. The region, which in prehistoric times was a humid lake aream, has yielded fossils of ancient birds and of dinosaurs with birdlike characteristics that some scientists say are evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.