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Article: Oldest bird and longest dinosaur. (Protoavis and Seismosaurus fossil discoveries)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- August 16, 1986
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1986 Science Service, 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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Oldest bird and longest dinosaur
Just as the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryxfossil is being reinstated as the earliest known bird after considerable controversy (SN:5/3/86, p.276), along come two crow-size skeletons that are not only 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx but also more birdlike, according to the paleontologists who discovered them. The Washington, D.C.-based National Geographic Society, which funded the work, announced this week that Sankar Chatterjee and his colleagues at Texas Tech University in Lubbock found the 225-million-year-old fossils near Post, Tex.
According to paleontologist John Ostromat Yale University, "the material ...