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more interesting stuff to keep you busy ...

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Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
<><><>Graduate School: it's not just a job, it's an indenture!<><><>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 09:08:19 -0800
From: Frederick Wilson <faw at ix.netcom.com>
To: Deborah Wisti-Peterson <nyneve at u.washington.edu>,
"Hookbills at onelist.com" <Hookbills at onelist.com>,
"SOFTBILLED_BIRDS at onelist.com" <SOFTBILLED_BIRDS at onelist.com>
Subject: [Fwd: Florida museum's bird-like dinosaur may hold evolutionary k=
ey]

More interesting stuff

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> Copyright =A9 2000 Associated Press
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> By TERRY SPENCER
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> DANIA BEACH, Fla. (March 17, 2000 10:48 p.m. EST
> http://www.nandotimes.com) - Scientists have identified what they say
> could be the most convincing evolutionary link yet between dinosaurs
> and birds: a 75 million-year-old creature with a roadrunner's body,
> arms that resembled clawed wings, and thin, hair-like feathers.
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> The Florida Institute of Paleontology unveiled the first recovered
> skeleton of the species - [3]bambiraptor feinbergi - on Thursday.
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> It is not clear whether it could fly, but experts said that
> anatomically it is the most bird-like dinosaur yet discovered. They
> said the finding advances the increasingly popular theory that birds
> evolved from dinosaurs.
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> Bambiraptor's skeleton was discovered in 1994 by 14-year-old Wes
> Linster, who was hunting for fossils near Montana's Glacier National
> Park. More than 95 percent of the warm-blooded carnivore's bones were
> recovered. Scientists are usually ecstatic to recover 30 percent of a
> dinosaur's skeleton.
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> "This species is truly a dinosaur Rosetta stone," said Martin Shugar,
> the institute's director, referring to the tablet found 200 years ago
> that helped archaeologists decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
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> The skeleton will be exhibited at the Graves Museum of Archaeology &
> Natural History, where the institute is based. Shugar persuaded
> Michael Feinberg, a Hollywood, Fla., investor and philanthropist, to
> buy the specimen for an undisclosed price and lend it to the museum.
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> Linster christened the specimen bambiraptor because it's small like
> Bambi. The feinbergi was added later to honor Feinberg.
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> John Ostrum, a Yale University professor and one of the world's
> leading paleontologists, examined the skeleton and likened it to the
> Mona Lisa. "I have never seen any specimen as complete as that and I
> have collected all over the world," he said.
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> Ostrum said bambiraptor has several traits usually found in birds,
> such as a wishbone instead of a full breastbone and avian-like arm
> bones.
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> About 3 feet long and weighing 7 pounds, bambiraptor lived in a
> sparsely forested area in what is now Montana at a time when the Rocky
> Mountains were just beginning to rise, said David A. Burnham, a
> University of Kansas paleontologist who assembled the skeleton.
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> It would have preyed on small mammals and reptiles, using its teeth,
> sharp talons and whip-like 18-inch tail to subdue its prey, said
> Burnham and Kraig Dertsler, a University of New Orleans professor who
> helped study it.
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> It was fast, had a keen sense of smell and the structure of its arms
> and its feathers may have allowed it to fly, although more study must
> be done before that can be concluded, Burnham and Dertsler said.
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