Down-Covered Dinosaur

摘要

The once radical notion that birds descended from dinosaurs-or may even be dinosaurs, the only living branch of the family that ruled the earth eons ago-has got stronger and stronger since paleontologists first started taking it seriously a couple of decades ago. Remarkable similarities in bone structure between dinos and birds were the first clue. Then came evidence, thanks to a series of astonishing discoveries in China's Liaoning province over the past five years, that some dinosaurs may have borne feathers. But a few scientists still argued that the link was weak; the bone similarities could be a coincidence, they said. And maybe those primitive structures visible in some fossils were feathers-but maybe not. You had to use your imagination to see them.