Dinosaurs with Beaks

Jeff Poling

A rare dinosaur skull found in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada, has lent support to the idea that birds are the modern descendants of the dinosaurs, a leading Canadian researcher claims.

Dr. Philip Currie, a paleontologist from the Royal Tyrell Museum in Alberta, has spent a year excavating a well-preserved skeleton of an ornithomimid, an ostrich-like dinosaur which was common 75 million years ago.

Ornithomimids are a well- known group, whose name, bird mimics, reflects their striking similarity to the ostrich. The new find is especially striking as its beak shows evidence of keratin, the material that makes up the beaks of modern birds.

The Alberta ornithomimid is the first carnivorous dinosaur showing clear evidence of a beak, Dr. Currie says. Dr. Currie believes that it didn't eat anything very big, feeding on a mixture of fruits, seeds, small vertebrates, amphibians and reptiles.

"It's one more line of evidence that shows how the transition took place from dinosaurs to birds," Dr. Currie says of the find.