As close to a bird as you can get without being a bird

Anytime you get a title with the word "bizarre" in it published in the normally staid and dry primary scientific literature, you know you have a winner.

The journal article title in Nature this week is, "A bizarre Jurassic maniraptoran from China with elongate ribbon-like feathers."


Love that reconstruction.

"As close to a bird as you can get without being a bird" is how Epidexipteryx hui was described in the Nature podcast. Which means, yes, it's another one of those pesky transitional fossils that the Texas State Board of Education chair Don McLeroy thinks we don't have enough of.