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| Adorable Serikornis sungei by Emily Willoughby |
Something I really enjoy about paleontology is how quickly
things can change. For example, when I was growing up, Dromaeosauridae was
confined to half a dozen genera from two continents. If you wanted a complete
list, you could check out
Raptors: The Nastiest Dinosaurs from your
local library. Now, though, Dromaeosauridae is more like Dromaeosauriformes
because there are something like five distinct groups now: Halszkaraptorinae,
Unenlaginae, Microraptorinae, Dromaeosaurinae and Velociraptorinae (those last
two are usually stuck together in a monophyletic Eudromaeosauria). It used to
be that dromaeosaurs came in two flavors: large and small. Now you’ve got
swan-necked, duck-billed dromaeosaurs; piscivorous, leggy dromaeosaurs; tiny,
potentially volant dromaeosaurs; and larger “classic” predatory dromaeosaurs.
All this has happened in the last twenty years. Heck, nobody
knew about
Halszkaraptor until a few
weeks ago.
