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Article: Fossil feud.(connection between birds and dinosaurs)(includes related article)
- Article from:
- Science World
- Article date:
- November 2, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Scholastic, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Scrambled dino eggs for breakfast? Feeding bread crumbs to dinos in your neighborhood park? Seeing dinos nest and chirp outside your bedroom window? Jurassic Park let loose??? Well, maybe. Paleontologists (fossil scientists) claim dinosaurs never really went extinct 65 million years ago--they're alive and feathered today ... as birds!
Could birds really be modern-day dinosaurs? A hard-boiled dispute has had paleontologists and a few ornithologists (bird scientists) squawking at each other for more than a century. On one hand, paleontologists insist that birds are not merely descendants of dinos--they are actual living dinosaurs. "Birds are a kind of theropod ...