Deinonychosaurian closeness to birds (was dinodimorphism)

["T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Jaime A. Headden wrote:

>   Also in the same issue of _CJES_ is a paper by Xu and Zhang on the cranial 
> anatomy of
> *Sinornithosaurus*, including two interesting qualities. One, there is, in 
> prep from an analysis
> of one of the species themselves, the suggestion that the earliest 
> dromaeosaurids
(deinonychosaurs, no?)
> were the most birdlike, and that the most derived were not.

Not entirely unexpected. How does this apply to _Utahraptor_ (contemporary
with the Liaoning forms) and _Deinonychus_ (living in the next age),
though?

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