When you picture a dinosaur, what does it look like? For
Jingmai O'Connor, paleobiologist and associate curator of reptiles at the Field Museum of Chicago, the dinosaurs she studies look
a lot more like birds.
"If you looked at an artist's reconstruction of something like Velociraptor or Microraptor ... you would see that it pretty much looks the same as a bird," Jingmai says. "In terms of the plumage, the soft tissues covering the body, it would have looked very, very birdlike."
In this episode,
Short Wave delves into the dinosaur-avian connection. Which dinosaurs had feathers? Were they using them to fly? And once and for all – what are those ancient dinosaurs' relationship to birds today?
Have other dinosaur questions you want us to unravel? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices:
podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy