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[garrison@efn.org (Garrison Hilliard)]

>Report shows new dinosaur-bird link

   By Mark Weinraub

   WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The theory that birds are descended from
   dinosaurs gained more credence Tuesday when paleontologists
announced
   the discovery of fossils of two species with both distinctive
feathers
   and dinosaur features.

   The fossils, unearthed in the Liaoning province of China, date back
   more than 120 million years and conclusively prove the hotly
contested
   theory that dinosaurs are the direct ancestors of birds, said
Philip
   Currie, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of
   Palaeontology in Canada.

   ``Dinosaurs have become almost synonymous with the word controversy
in
   science,'' Currie told a news conference. ``One of the
controversies,
   I think, is finally resolved.''

   A team of scientists worked to identify the fossils as two separate
   species and their findings were published in National Geographic
   magazine and the journal Nature.

   Scientists in the dinosaur-bird camp had been looking for a
definitive
   feature such as the feathers to corroborate the relationship
between
   the two, said Ji Qiang, director of the National Geological Museum
in
   Beijing, who worked on the fossils.

   ``They represent a missing link between dinosaurs and birds which
we
   had expected to find,'' he told the news conference.

   It is hard to find the telltale signs that dinosaurs had bird-like
   traits such as hollow bones and feathers because they are often
   destroyed in the fossilized record, said National Geographic
magazine
   editor Bill Allen.

   ``These fossils are things we predicted would be there but
seriously
   in my lifetime I never thought we were going to find them,'' said
Mark
   Norell, chairman and associate curator in the department of
vertebrate
   paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York,
   who also worked on the fossils.

   The two species, named Caudipteryx zoui (tail feather) and
   Protoarchaeopteryx robusta, were both fast runners that were
probably
   unable to fly, judging by their short arms and long legs. The
feathers
   may have been for insulation or display, Currie said.

   Protoarchaeopteryx was about the size of a modern day turkey, and
may
   have looked like the forebears of Archaeopteryx, the earliest known
   bird. Most of its body was probably covered with feathers.

   Caudipteryx was about three feet tall, the scientists said. It,
too,
   probably had feathers all over its body although the fossils
   distinctively show feathers only on its tail and hands.

   Both animals closely resemble meat-eating dinosaurs called
theropods,
   Currie said.

   The fossils show that birds use their dinosaur features for
activities
   that they were never originally intended for, such as flight, said
   Kevin Padian, curator of the University of California Museum of
   Paleontology.

   ``These things cannot be considered for birds or for flight.''
Padian
   said in a telephone interview. ``They evolved in little carnivorous
   dinosaurs. These birds co-opted these features. They made them do
new
   things.''

   The feathers open a door into many more controversies about
dinosaurs,
   Currie said. The next question will be to identify exactly what
   purpose the feathers served but this may be hard because important
   determinants such as color have been lost in the fossil record,
Padian
   said.

   Finding the purpose of the feathers may lead to determining if
   dinosaurs were warm blooded or cold blooded and the ''uncoupling''
of
   feathers from flight provides new avenues to explore the origins of
   flight, Currie said.

   Reut22:29 06-23-98

   (23 Jun 1998 22:28 EDT)

                              Go to TIME Daily

  =20

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