Jurassic Period fossils found in Liaoning province open door to past

A spectacular array of beautifully preserved fossils unearthed in northeastern China over the past two decades provides a unique portal on life 160 million years ago in the Jurassic Period, an international team of scientists says.

Among them are outlandish feathered dinosaurs, a quirky flying reptile, the earliest known gliding mammal, the earliest known swimming mammal - and a salamander that turned up everywhere.

Writing in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, they said the plant and animal fossils collectively represent a distinct ecological grouping - or biota - of life forms that existed alongside one another.

The fossil record of life on earth is notoriously spotty, with some spans of time remaining all but unknown. That is not the case in what these scientists call the Daohugou Biota, named for a village in the region the fossils have been found.

"It is an unprecedentedly good window into that particular place and time," palaeontologist Corwin Sullivan of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, who led the research, said.

"It is a time when a lot of interesting things are happening," palaeontologist David Hone, of Queen Mary University of London, added. "We've got feathered dinosaurs. We've got weird mammals. We've got fish. We've got lizards. We've got all this wonderful, wonderful stuff."

The fossils have been found in western Liaoning province and nearby areas. It was an inland region filled with trees, dotted with lakes and teeming with life 160 million years ago.