Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 317, Issue 5843, Pages 1378-1381Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1144066
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Fossil evidence for changes in dinosaurs near the lineage leading to birds and the origin of flight has been sparse. A dinosaur from Mongolia represents the basal divergence within Dromaeosauridae. The taxon's small body size and phylogenetic position imply that extreme miniaturization was ancestral for Paraves (the clade including Avialae, Troodontidae, and Dromaeosauridae), phylogenetically earlier than where flight evolution is strongly inferred. In contrast to the sustained small body sizes among avialans throughout the Cretaceous Period, the two dinosaurian lineages most closely related to birds, dromaeosaurids and troodontids, underwent four independent events of gigantism, and in some lineages size increased by nearly three orders of magnitude. Thus, change in theropod body size leading to flight's origin was not unidirectional.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available