Remember when you were a kid and had a passion for dinosaurs? Then you
grew up, discovered the opposite sex, got a career, etc. (not necessarily
in that order), and in your mature years discovered birds. Well, all you
were doing was getting back to your roots. More and more evidence has
piled up in the past few years that dinosaurs were indeed the ancestors of
our feathered friends. The best support is the variety of feathered
dinosaurs that have been described recently in the scientific literature.
The last issue of The Auk (Vol. 119, No. 1, Jan 2002) has an article
detailing the evidence for this and good arguments for why ornithologists
ought to take dinosaur evolution into account when thinking about the
biology of birds.

I have taken the liberty of scanning the cover illustration of that Auk, a
little group of feathered dinosaurs. You can find it at:
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/Microraptor.jpg.

So I wish everyone good dinosauring this weekend!

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
1500 N. Warner, #1088
Tacoma, WA 98416-1088
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html