Counting the pages of books about dinosaurs and birds
2003; Elsevier BV; Volume: 18; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s0169-5347(03)00131-9
ISSN1872-8383
Autores Tópico(s)Ichthyology and Marine Biology
ResumoThe past few years have been an amazing time for students of bird origins – exceptional new feathered and nonfeathered theropod dinosaurs, birds such as Rahonavis that don't look like birds [ 1 Forster C.A. et al. The theropodan ancestry of birds: new evidence from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Science. 1998; 279: 1915-1919 Crossref PubMed Scopus (243) Google Scholar ], theropods, such as alvarezsaurs and the four-winged Microraptor, that do look like birds [ 2 Chiappe L.M. et al. The skull of a new relative of the stem-group bird Mononykus. Nature. 1998; 392: 272-278 Crossref Scopus (97) Google Scholar , 3 Xu X. et al. Four-winged dinosaurs from China. Nature. 2003; 421: 335-340 Crossref PubMed Scopus (329) Google Scholar ], even fake birds (‘Archaeoraptor’) that aren't even birds at all [ 4 Zhou Z. et al. Archaeoraptor's better half. Nature. 2002; 420: 285 Crossref PubMed Scopus (34) Google Scholar ], have been discovered and described at an alarming pace. Because the number of new species of Mesozoic birds discovered and described over the past ten years more than triples those known for much of the past two centuries, keeping up with the recent literature in this area can be more than a little confusing. It is helpful then to sometimes consult books, and you could do worse than to read these two recent offerings.
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