Those new fossils just keep pouring out of China. Here's a new troodontid dinosaur with the lovely name of Mei long, which was discovered intact as if caught abruptly in the instant of its death. Troodontids are long-necked bipedal dinosaurs that look rather ostrich-like. This one is a juvenile that died suddenly in its sleep, and is presumably in its normal resting posture.
Continue reading "Mei long, the sleeping dragon" (on Pharyngula)
2 Comments
benthompson · 15 November 2004
Although it may be the closest we have to an appropriate name for this beautiful creature, i feel that to invoke the name of Dragon is to infer that a dragon is what has been found. In the short term this will generate alot of publicity, over the longer term we may lose our dragon legends altogether, our imagined images will be forever based on Mei Long a sleeping bird
Bob Maurus · 15 November 2004
But wouldn't it be somehow wonderfully fulfilling and "right" if this descendant of Fafnir and Smaug and all those other alternately horrific and beneficent creatures were to finally be this poignant and ultimately pathos inducing tragedy?