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The Link Between Dinosaurs and Birds (video)

Object Description

 Museum Victoria’s Priscilla Gaff talks about the link between dinosaurs and birds.

Educational Value Statement

The 'Deinonychus' was an agile, fast, active predator. It possibly also had feathers to help it manoeuvre around, and may have been warm blooded, so helps suggest the link between dinosaurs and birds.

The 'Archaeopteryx' was found in Germany in the nineteenth century.  It has feathers like a bird but also teeth like a dinosaur. Although some scientists at the time thought that birds might have come from dinosaurs, evolution was a new theory and this idea was not generally accepted.

'Deinonychus' was studied by a scientist in the 1960s and his research showed that the links between the two were incredibly strong.

Some of the recent discoveries of dinosaurs and fossil birds have come out of a province in China called Liaoning. We now know that with so much evidence from China, and from 'Deinonychus', that we had dinosaurs that were covered in feathers, and that the link between dinosaurs and birds is very clear.

© Museum Victoria and Curriculum Corporation 2008 (except where otherwise indicated). You may view, display, print out, copy and modify this material for non-commercial educational purposes provided you retain all acknowledgements associated with the material.