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• n  any of numerous carnivorous dinosaurs of the Triassic to Cretaceous with short forelimbs that walked or ran on strong hind legs

• It wasn't until the 1970s that Yale paleontologist John Ostrom began building a bone-by-bone case for the link--at least for theropod dinosaurs, which include velociraptors and .
• Apparently, the evolution from theropod to bird took many turns and detours.
• A year later, this quarry in Liaoning yielded a new small theropod dinosaur, a voracious, bipedal hunter, later named Sinosauropteryx.

• theropod dinosaur
• bird-footed dinosaur

News & Articles

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• Were dinosaur dads the caring types?
  Five years ago, a study of theropod dinosaurs concluded that it was male dinosaurs that incubated the eggs of their offspring. In these species, female birds can plow more resources into bigger clutches, because the female is free to leave the nest and replenish her energy reserves after laying eggs. To try to eliminate this effect, Deeming's team counted the eggs in all known fossil nests and ...
  June 7, 2013 - San Antonio Express-News

Quotes

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• Xu Xing in guardian.co.uk
  Xu, who is based in Beijing, said: "The fossils provide confirmation that the bird-dinosaur hypothesis is correct, and supports the idea that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs (the group of predatory dinosaurs that includes allosaurus and...
• Matt Lamanna in Leader Times
  I like to tell people it's a theropod that went vegan,Lamanna said, adding that paleontologists aren't sure why the dinosaur, whose ancestors were likely carnivores, switched to an all-plant diet.
• Phil Currie in Globe and Mail
  This past December I joined an expedition in the Antarctic to collect the rest of the only known skeleton of an unusual crested theropod [meat-eating dinosaur] called the Cryolophosaurus ellioti,Currie says. "It was originally found in...