Fossil reveals bird with long, flashy tail feathers that lived 120 million years ago - CNN

"We've never seen this combination of different kinds of tail feathers before in a fossil bird," said Jingmai O'Connor, study author and a paleontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, in a statement.

O'Connor is the associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum's Negaunee Integrative Research Center.

"It had a fan of short feathers at the base and then two extremely long plumes," O'Connor said.

The combination of a short tail fan with two long feathers is called a pintail, we see it in some modern birds like sunbirds and quetzals."

Yuanchuavis likely flew similarly to a quetzal, a forest-dwelling bird that doesn't have the most exceptional flight capabilities, O'Connor said.

"The well-preserved tail feathers in this new fossil bird provide great new information about how sexual selection has shaped the avian tail from their earliest stage," Wang said.