Sentences with phrase «direct ancestors of birds»

But all those feathered dinosaurs were theropods, flesh - eating dinosaurs that include the direct ancestors of birds.

Not exact matches

A transitional form is a proof of principle, it simply does not need to be the direct ancestor of modern birds.

Since then, more four - winged dinosaurs have been found, but doubt remained about whether they were direct ancestors of modern birds, or just an unusual group of dinobirds that later died out.

To Norell, it's important to read these as feathers all over the body because the major thrust of his work as a scientist is to show that dinosaurs are direct ancestors of modern birds.

Yet he cautions that the «conclusions of the paper are overstated» because the study does not prove that prehistoric lice were actually infesting the direct ancestors of today's bird and mammal species rather than other animals that may have led to evolutionary dead ends.

«And then we get complete sets of lineages we are quite familiar with: coelacanths, also lungfish, and of course our direct ancestors the tetrapods (every land vertebrate ever, plus birds, bats, dolphins and whales).»