The Chinese archeologists have reported the finding of the remains of gigantic bird-like dinosaur in the Gobi Desert in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

According to their analysis, the gigantic bird-like dinosaur has lived about 70 million years ago and it could be the missing link in the evolutionary path between dinosaurs and birds.

The Gigantoraptor erlianensis, as the Chinese scientists called it, was eight meters long, five meters tall and weighed about 1.4 tones.

A phylogenetic analysis of the skeleton placed it within the family that includes the beaked, bird-like Oviraptor.

"The analyses strongly supported the oviraptorosaur affinity ofgigantoraptor erlianensis and suggested this new dinosaur was in an intermediate position in oviraptorosaurian evolution," Xu Xing,a researcher with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleon anthropology with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, quoted by Chinese press agency Xinhua.

Since the fossil showed signs of arrested growth, it was most likely still a young adult when it died, so the full-sized dinosaur might have been even larger.