A tiny dinosaur with batlike wings may have glided through the Jurassic forests of what is now northeastern China, say paleontologists who analyzed the animal's bones.

Unlike any dinosaur ever found, the feathered pipsqueak may have been a failed experiment in early bird flight, the researchers say.

Unlike its close relatives — birds and birdlike dinosaurs — the new specimen had long, rodlike bones on its wrists connected by soft, fleshy tissue.

The creature is the first known dinosaur with membranous wings, said Xing Xu, a paleontologist at Linyi University in China, and co-author of the study published today (April 29) in the journal Nature. [See Images of the Bat-Dinosaur from China]