Scientists unearth largest dinosaur ever found with wing feathers

LAWRENCE, Kan., Nov. 5 (UPI) -- A team of paleontologists have discovered a new raptor, the largest dinosaur specimen ever found with wing feathers.

Named Dakotaraptor steini, the dino was found in the famed fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota's badlands. The bones are 66 million years old. Scientists say the ancient velociraptor relative was capable of reaching 17 feet in length and boasted a wingspan of nearly four feet.

Only the 23-foot Utahraptor grew larger, and it died out 60 million years before Dakotaraptor arrived on the scene.

The Cretaceous-era creature, recently described in the journal Paleontological Contributions, lived alongside popularized species like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.

"This new predatory dinosaur also fills the body size gap between smaller theropods and large tyrannosaurs that lived at this time," David Burnham, a paleontologist at Kansas and co-author of the new study, said in a press release.

Unlike other winged dino species, which evolved into flight, researchers think Dakotaraptor took the opposite path -- having grown too large for flight, its feathers a remnant of its evolutionary past.

But that doesn't mean its feathers were useless, researchers say. Dakotaraptor likely used its wing feathers as a way to attract mates, shield young offspring from predators or to pin down prey when hunting.

Feathers or no feathers, Dakotaraptor was a fearsome predator. With sizable talons and sharp claws the size of human hands, the raptor was deadly. It could also chase down just about anything.

"Dakotaraptor was probably the fastest predator in the entire Hell Creek Formation," lead study author Robert DePalma, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum, told the Smithsonian Magazine. "It was the Ferrari of raptors."

The raptors may have hunted in packs. And if so, a group of them could have taken down tyrannosaurs.

Like the rest of Earth's non-avian dinosaurs and 75 percent of all living creatures, Dakotaraptor was wiped out some 66 million years ago by the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.