When turkeys ruled the world!
IT WON’T impress fans of the Jurassic Park movies who prefer their dinosaurs big, toothy and terrifying. The latest species of the prehistoric reptiles to be discovered is a rather modest 6ft 6in, toothless, and looks rather more like a large turkey. Uncovered in China, the Corythoraptor jacobsi is believed to have had brightly coloured feathers and a crest when it roamed the Earth 66million to 100million years ago. The finding sheds more light on how birds evolved from dinosaurs. The group of dinosaurs known as oviraptosaurs are turning up in increasing numbers as fossils in China. Dr Dean Lomax, palaeontologist at the University of Manchester, said: ‘This will help add to the notion that birds are dinosaurs, and thus that dinosaurs are not extinct.’