PhosphorusDecree wrote:
Bring on the feathers, I say!
To me, it's just part of how dinsosaurs are getting more and more interesting. We used to think they were these big, dumb, sluggish things, only impressive for their size. Primitive creatures that died to make way for us sophisticated mammals, poor sods.
As a teenager, my favourite dinosaur was Deinonychus, the raptor with the massive middle-toe claws. It's because in a more highbrow illustrated dino book I read about John Ostrom's work on Deinonychus. He realised that, for its anatomy to make any sense, this creature had to be fast, agile, poised and probably quite intelligent. Instead of lurching slowly around roaring at things, Deinonychus was bounding about doing flying kicks with a scythe on its foot. Way more interesting.
Years later, I learned about the Secretarybird. Which is a really strange African bird related to eagles, hawks and vultures. It can fly, but doesn't hunt in the air. Instead, it runs around the plains on its long skinny legs, kicking things to death and eating them. Plus ca change....
In northern Mexico, and in the U.S. desert southwest we have an unrelated smaller bird that lives much the same lifestyle as the secretary bird: the road runner.
Also know as "the snake killer" the road runner (state bird of New Mexico, and star of warner brothers cartoons) runs down prey on the ground and rips it apart with its feet.
Road runners are a type of cuckoo, not related to raptors (eagles, hawks, falcons, or the secretary bird).
The secretary bird is a kind of ground-bound eagle, and there is also a large American raptor called "the crested caracara" with unusually long powerful legs for a raptor that does a lot of its hunting while walking and or wading on the ground (ie seems to be starting down the same evolutionary path as that taken earlier by its cousin the African secretary bird). The crested caracara lives in the much the same desert Tex-Mex region as does the road runner.
All birds are descended from bipedal predatory dinosaurs. And apparently more than one living species of bird has found it easy to revert (to some degree or another) to the ground bound hunting lifestyle of their dinosaur ancestors.
11 Apr 2017, 8:35 am
