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Discovery of Raptor-Like Dinosaur Adds a New Wrinkle to the Origin of Birds

Noted: Those bones, representing a partial skeleton, were used to name the new dinosaur Hesperornithoides miessleri today in the journal PeerJ. Described by University of Wisconsin-Madison paleontologist and artist Scott Hartman and colleagues, this dinosaur is categorized as an early member of a group of svelte, small, sickle-clawed dinosaurs known to experts as troodontids. These were raptor-like dinosaurs related to the group that contains more famous carnivores like Velociraptor, as well as the forerunners of birds.