Environment

New Feathered Dinosaur Found

by Jordan Yerman | January 18, 2009 at 09:13 am

118 views | 10 Recommendations | 4 comments

With all the Gaza and Inauguration coverage, I think we at NowPublic need a quick feathered-dinosaur story, so here we go: fossilized remains of a feathered dino found in China may help us better understand how these prehistoric creatures evolved into modern-day birds. The specimen uncovered is believed to date from the Jurassic period, as in "Park".

In many ways, it is "more basal, or primitive, than Archaeopteryx," said paleontologist Xu Xing at Beijing's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird, lived 150 million years ago.

The protobird is "very close to the point of divergence" at which a new branch of winged dinosaurs first took flight, said Xu.

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Uwe Paschen

at 09:23 on January 18th, 2009

Now, I do for one like Feathered Dinosaur Stories, especially when they do not involve a movie and more sound science and archeology as in this case in China. Now they did make a lot of finds there in recent years and NG news is usually on top of it as well, since they do sponsor a lot of this sort of research.

Barry ORegan

at 10:05 on January 18th, 2009

Yeah, but do they taste like chicken or dinosaur?

Questions, Questions, so many unanswered Questions.

Seriously though, if winged Dinosaurs, including Dino a 40 ton T-Rex which they discovered had feathers when young and shed them as they grow older certainly sheds new light on how they evolved into Birds.