Thursday, June 18, 2009

Fossilized fingers

The hands of a newly discovered dinosaur species provide fresh support for the notion that birds are closely related to dinosaurs, researchers say.

- Science News (link here)

1 comment:

Elizabeth said...

The connection between dinosaurs and birds is actually one of the least disputed points in dinosaur evolution. Notice how NatureNews opens its writeup of the story, "Birds are generally considered to be the living descendants of dinosaurs", whereas the article itself just dives right in with "Theropods have traditionally been assumed to have lost manual digits from the lateral side inward, which differs from the bilateral reduction pattern seen in other tetrapod groups." I think it's pretty sad how pop science lags a couple of decades behind the front lines.