Dinosaurs Take Wing
Photographs by O. Louis Mazzatenta
Text by Jennifer Ackerman
Posed in courtship display, a model depicts a creature nearly three feet long that stunned paleontologists when resurrected from its stony grave—a dinosaur with feathers. This plumage appears on the fossil at the end of the tail and under the arm. More than 120 million years old, Caudipteryx zoui and three other new fossil species from China support the thinking of most scientists: Birds descended from dinosaurs.
Hopping in the footsteps of the famous Archaeopteryx (dated at 150 million years old), the bones of these new discoveries add spark to the 150-year old debate about the relationship between birds and dinosaurs.
NGM 1998/07