Modern Day Dinosaurs: Are Dinosaurs…Truly…Gone?

By Laleh Rashidian

What springs to mind when you hear the word “Dinosaur”? Do you conjure a mental image of Tyrannosaurus Rex and its tiny flailing arms, a powerful but pathetic animal celebrity? Or perhaps you think of fossils and enormous bones, things to look at behind the glass panes of a museum exhibition. Or if you’re more of a sci-fi type (or a cinema fan in general) , maybe you’re thinking of Jurassic Park, and images of Jeff Goldblum running around screaming while herds of monsters tear up everything in sight springs to mind. You may be wondering what these different images have in common. They portray Dinosaurs as the stuff of jokes and cartoons, as exhibits in an empty museum, or as a fantasy, portrayed alongside vampires and werewolves and other mythical creatures. In other words, they are not of the real world, a long removed chapter of history, something to read about but never to see, just one other fantasy. #USERN_Quick_Reads

But is that truly the case? Are dinosaurs…truly…gone?

If any of you were dinosaur fans during childhood (or adulthood, who’s to judge), you’ve likely heard of the famous dinosaur species known as Archeopteryx. 

This remarkable species was, for many years, the only clue that there may indeed be a link between birds and dinosaurs. The fossils of this species showed evidence of feathers, even though the teeth and large muscular tail were vastly different from the birds of today. The very name “Archeopteryx” means ‘ancient wing’.

While it may be relatively easy to think of Archeopteryx as the ancient forefather of todays chicken, other contestants on the family tree are a lot harder to get your head around. That is, birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs known as Theropods or "Beast-feet". Among the more impressive of the members of the family is a species that might probably be the most commonly known dinosaur in history, none other than the T-Rex!

But how does a T-Rex suddenly sprout wings and fly?

Well, that is just the case. It doesn’t. But rather the features that make a bird a bird, and an archaeopteryx an archaeopteryx were formed over millions of years.

One of those changes has already begun to take shape in a T-Rex, even though it may not be obvious at first glance. But the T-Rex, and some other members of the theropod family such as the Velociraptor, walk on two legs. This method of movement, known as Bipedal (or two-leg) motion, is an integral one in bird evolution. And let’s face it, have you ever seen a bird walk on four legs?

Another very noticeable difference between the sparrow and the T Rex is their size.

Why did this particular group of dinosaurs decide to grow smaller, when the opposite was happening in so many other dinosaur families?

It may be, the reason that theropods began to grow smaller was because the other families were growing larger. To put it simply, Texas cowboy style, this town simply ain’t big enough for all of us. Once the number of huge dinosaur species begins to rise, competition inevitably will too. But a smaller species might just be able to dart in and steal a bite of food while the larger fellows aren’t looking. It’s a good thing they did too, since something as bulky as the T-Rex would never have been able to fly.

Another important trait in birds compared to dinosaurs, is that they have much smaller skulls, and larger brains and eyes in those smaller skulls. These characteristics, however, can be observed at one stage of the lifecycle of the crocodile (an animal that is said to be virtually unchanged for millions of years), and that is during the embryo stage. It could then be deduced that dinosaurs, during the course of evolution, somehow managed to revert back to a more primary stage in their life cycle.

But is that possible, you might ask? 

It certainly is, and it is a phenomenon that is frequently observed in the animal kingdom. This phenomenon, known scientifically as paedomorphosis, literally means ‘to change back into a child’, and one example of it is seen in the domestic cat. It is hypothesized that paedomorphosis in cats was an important factor in their domestication by early civilizations such as the Ancient Egyptians. Another, less common example is the axolotl, an amphibian that has been completely halted in embryonic form

But there is still one important factor, apart from small size and feathers and two legs, that a bird has and a dinosaur doesn’t. The all-important bird beak. It may be surprising to hear that changing a dinosaur’s snout into the beak of a bird took very little effort on the part of evolution. This can be done by fusion of two bones in the snout into one large surface that forms the beak. That effect, can be achieved by altering regulation in the genes that form the skeleton of the face. This effect can also be easily reversed, as scientists found when experimenting with chicken embryos, discovered that they could change the shape of a chicken’s skull to more closely resemble that of a dinosaur simply by altering gene regulation.

So there you have it, you start out with a dinosaur, and all it takes is a few million years for it to stand on two legs, shrink, grow feathers and start squawking. It might not exactly be a chicken yet, but its close!