A new study out of the American Museum of Natural History suggests that velociraptors, the evil dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were actually feathered, looking a lot like birds.
The dinosaurs, portrayed as horse-size in the movie Jurassic Park, were actually not much bigger than a modern-day turkey.
"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.
"Instead of the more reptilian-looking versions that Steven Spielberg used in Jurassic Park, these would be much fluffier, much [more] feathery animals with what looks like wings on their forearms."
Raised Knobs
Turner and colleagues examined a velociraptor fossil in Mongolia's Gobi Desert and found the forearm had regularly spaced bumps that would have held the quills of secondary feathers.
The velociraptor fossil was found in 1998, buried in 80-million-year-old sandstone deposits.
Photo by Flickr user Djenan used under a Creative Commons license
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