THE DINOSAUR AND BIRD CONNECTION
	A team of paleontologists from China, Canada and the U.S. announced last week that they have discovered not one, but two new species of small dinosaur, each of which was clearly covered, not with reptilian scales, but with feathers. According to their report, the specimens not only cement the increasingly popular theory that birds are descended directly from dinosaurs; they also suggest that many kinds of dinosaur including the vicious velociraptors, that slashed their way through [Michael] Crichton's [Jurassic Park], may have been festooned with their own colorful plumage. - Excerpt from Time Magazine/July 6/98

"Look Harold! Up in the Sky! It's a Tyrannosaurus Rex!!

With the finding of Archaeopteryx, ("Ancient Bird"), the Paleontological world began to agree more and more that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs. The anatomical similarities between Archaeopteryx and the coelurosuar dinosaurs are amazingly alike; so much so that except for the fact that Archaeopteryx had feathers one would be hard pressed to tell them apart.

There are still some Scientists, however, that do not believe that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs and the only similarity they share is the fact that they may have both descended from a common ancestor.

Now with the finding of the Protoarchaopteryx and Caudipteryx fossils, the weight of the argument seems to be heavily in favour with the dino to bird descendancy.

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