Buenos Aires  - Fossils of a 5-metre-long short-armed flesh- eating dinosaur previously unknown to scientists have been found in Argentina, the scientist who headed the excavation said Wednesday in Buenos Aires.

The body of the estimated 370-kilogram creature may have also been covered with feathers and could provide an important link to understanding how dinosaurs developed the capability of flight, said Fernando Novas, the paleontologist who lead the dig in the southernmost province of Patagonia.

A life-size model of the fierce creature, named Austroraptor Cabazai, exhibited at the Musuem of Natural History indicated a slender carnivore that was probably very fast moving and intelligent.

It likely belonged to the class of dinosaurs known as raptors, or dromaeosaurids, bird-like dinosaurs that made a terrifying splash in the film Jurassic Park, Novas indicated.

The fossils were found in Bajo de Santa Rosa in the Rio Negro Province.

With its extremely short front arms the animal, thought to have lived 70 million years ago, looked like a small brother of Tyrannosaurus Rex. (dpa)