Velociraptor are well-known for their role as vicious and cunning killers in the 1990 novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and its 1993 film adaptation, directed by Steven Spielberg, in which they served as the main antagonists. The "raptors" portrayed in Jurassic Park were modeled after a larger relative, Deinonychus, which Gregory Paul at the time called Velociraptor antirrhopus.[3] The paleontologists in the film and the novel excavate a so-called Velociraptor skeleton in Montana, far from the central Asian range of Velociraptor but well within the range of Deinonychus. A character in Crichton's novel also states that "…Deinonychus is now considered one of the velociraptors", indicating that Crichton used Paul's taxonomy, though the "raptors" in the novel are referred to as V. mongoliensis.

Maniraptora ("hand snatchers") is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to Ornithomimus velox. It contains the major subgroups Avialae, Deinonychosauria, Oviraptorosauria and Therizinosauria. Ornitholestes and the Alvarezsauroidea are also often included. Together with the next closest sister group, the Ornithomimosauria, Maniraptora comprises the more inclusive clade Maniraptoriformes. Maniraptorans first appear in the fossil record during the Jurassic Period (see Eshanosaurus), and are regarded as surviving today as about 10,000 species of living birds.

Since the late 19th century, it has been generally accepted by palaeontologists, and celebrated in lay reference works, as being the oldest known bird (more precisely, a close relative of the direct ancestor of modern birds), although there have been occasional dissenters in the research community.

Xiaotingia is an extinct genus of Archaeopteryx-like theropod dinosaur from early Late Jurassic deposits of western Liaoning, China.

A cladistic analysis by Xu et al. showed that Xiaotingia formed a clade with Archaeopteryx, the Dromaeosauridae and the Troodontidae to the exclusion of other forms traditionally seen as birds.

Originally posted by Nicolas Flamel
reply to post by muzzleflash

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One thing I haven't discussed yet is the evolution of feathers themselves. Even feathered dinosaurs may not have had "modern" feathers. Feathers evolved too, probably starting for protection from physical or weather damage and evolving into modern feathers:

Link

Like many other theropods of the Yixian Formation, Sinocalliopteryx was preserved with "protofeathers," simple filamentous integument (structures covering the skin), very similar to that found in Sinosauropteryx. The integument of Sinocalliopteryx differ in length across the body, with the longest protofeathers covering the hips, base of the tail, and back of the thighs. These longest protofeathers measured up to 10 centimeters (4 in) in length. Interestingly, protofeathers were also found on the metatarsus (upper part of the foot)

Coelacanths ( /ˈsiːləkænθ/, adaptation of Modern Latin Cœlacanthus "hollow spine", from Greek κοῖλ-ος koilos "hollow" + ἄκανθ-α akantha "spine", referring to the hollow caudal fin rays of the first fossil specimen described and named by Agassiz in 1839[1]) are members of an order of fish that includes the oldest living lineage of Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish + tetrapods) known to date.

Coelacanths were thought to have gone extinct in the Late Cretaceous, but were rediscovered in 1938 off the coast of South Africa.[2] Latimeria chalumnae and the Latimeria menadoensis are the only two living coelacanth species and are found along the coastlines of the Indian Ocean.[3] The coelacanth has been nicknamed a “living fossil”, because its fossils were found long before the actual discovery of a live specimen.[1] The coelacanth is thought to have first evolved approximately 400 million years ago.[4]

The new report, authored by Xing Xu, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, and colleagues, described the anatomy of a newly found fossil dubbed Xiaotingia zhengi, a two-pound creature with feathers, sharp claws, fewer than 10 teeth and a small shallow snout like Archaeopteryx. It may have lived in northeastern China's Liaoning province during the late Jurassic period, the authors reported online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The famous winged and feathered fossil Archaeopteryx has been knocked off its perch as the oldest known bird, according to new research. Instead, it was most likely a dinosaur.

Protofeathers and feather diversity - Oxford Journals

Originally posted by Nicolas Flamel
reply to post by muzzleflash

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Protofeathers and feather diversity - Oxford Journals

Interesting article. It makes me wonder why some dinosaurs kept scales. But then again if they weren't selected against, scales would have been just fine for them.

Originally posted by Nicolas Flamel
reply to post by muzzleflash

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Yeah, I read about this. Xing Xu is trying to claim the fossil he found may be the earliest animal on the bird lineage. He is getting some resistance from other paleontologists. The dust should settle in a decade or so

Amphicoelias ( /ˌæmfɨˈsiːliəs/, meaning 'biconcave', from the Greek αμφι, amphi: "on both sides", and κοιλος, koilos: "hollow, concave") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that includes what may be the largest dinosaur ever discovered, A. fragillimus. Based on surviving descriptions of a single fossil bone, A. fragillimus may have been the longest known vertebrate at 40 to 60 metres (130 to 200 ft) in length, and may have had a mass of up to 122 metric tons (135 short tons). However, because the only fossil remains were lost at some point after being studied and described in the 1870s, evidence survives only in drawings and field notes. Amphicoelias is present in stratigraphic zone 6 of the Morrison Formation.[1]

The gigantic bones attributed to A. fragillimus have often been ignored in summaries of the largest dinosaurs partly because, according to various subsequent reports, the whereabouts of both the vertebra and the femur are unknown, and all attempts to locate them have failed.[8][10] Carpenter, in 2006, presented a possible scenario for the disappearance of the A. fragillimus specimens. As Cope noted in his description, the neural arch bone material was very fragile, and techniques to harden and preserve fossil bone had not yet been invented (Cope's rival, paleontologist O.C. Marsh, was the first to use such chemicals, in the early 1880s). Carpenter observed that the fossil bones known from the A. fragillimus quarry would have been preserved in deeply weathered mudstone, which tends to crumble easily and fragment into small, irregular cubes. Therefore, the bone may have crumbled badly and been discarded by Cope soon after he illustrated it in rear view for his paper (Carpenter suggested that this may explain why Cope drew the vertebra in only one view, rather than from multiple angles as he did for his other discoveries).