May be.... May be not.... Scientists recently found that velociraptor looks different....
First of all.... Velociraptor was portrayed in the movie Jurassic Park as 6 feet tall rather than the true 3 feet (1 meter) tall.
Velociraptor fossil was found in 1998 in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, buried in 80-million-year-old sandstone deposits. The fossil showed that the animal was probably about 5 feet (1.5 meters) long and weighed about 30 pounds (15 kilograms). "If people saw this animal now, they would think it's a really strange-looking bird," said study lead author Alan Turner, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a graduate student at Columbia University.
Secondly.... Instead of the reptilian look in Jurassic Park, velociraptors had feathers in real life.
Turner and colleagues found the forearm fossil had regularly spaced bumps that would have held the quills of secondary feathers. The Mongolian fossil had six bumps about 0.2 inch (0.4 centimeter) apart. The raptors' feathers was certainly not used for flying. They might be a leftover of their ancestors. They might also be for display as seen in birds like the peacock, for temperature control, to shield nests or to help maneuver while running.
If you believe in the theory of evolution...
Scientists believe birds, which first appeared roughly 150 million years ago, evolved from small feathered carnivorous dinosaurs. Velociraptor was a very close relative of birds.
Source:
National Geographics
Reuters
Telegraph
The Associated Press
Science Daily
No comments:
Post a Comment