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Editorial: A gigantic early bird
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Pity this particular ancestor of today's little birdies isn't around today. It would make the action around the backyard bird feeder so much more interesting and it would certainly solve the problem of seed-stealing squirrels.
Chinese researchers exploring in Inner Mongolia have found the fossilized remains of a birdlike dinosaur that occupies a unique niche in the spectrum by which certain dinosaurs evolved into birds.
Like a bird, it had a beak, claws, hollow bones and what appear to be rudimentary feathers. Like many dinosaurs, it was huge it had the dimensions of a T. rex and this one wasn't even fully grown. The scientists named it, aptly, Gigantoraptor.
On the one hand, you wouldn't want one of these hanging around your yard, even if it did hold down unwanted wildlife.
On the other hand, it would be fascinating to see Gigantoraptor in action.
The specimen, a young adult, was 25 feet long, almost 12 feet high at the shoulder, with a long, ostrich-like neck and weighing 3,000 pounds.
However, said paleontologist Xing Xu, the team leader, "Being 3,000 pounds heavy, no one would expect this species to fly."
Darn.
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