Informant38

Dr Zhou said the temptation to add a longer tail would have been difficult to resist. "This specimen was presumably assembled by a Chinese farmer who wished to make it a more complete looking fossil, which could be sold for a higher price," he said.

The specimen ended up in America where it was bought by a private collector for $80,000 (�51,000). It appeared to be the perfect example of a creature that was half dinosaur, half bird and it became an icon for the evolutionary transition between the two.

Soon after the accounts were published, though, the other half of the slab containing the fossil was discovered at the same site in China.