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Feathered Dragons edited by Phillip J. Currie et al, Indiana University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0253343739 Reviewed by Douglas Palmer

WHEN he first described three-toed fossil footprints, some gigantic, back in the 1830s, the Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock of Amherst College in Massachusetts attributed them to “preadamic birds”. Now we know that the tracks were made by dinosaurs but, as Feathered Dragons reveals, they were probably feathered dinosaurs – not unlike birds.

This is a superb overview of the past decade’s discoveries of feathered dinosaurs. It has 23 international experts essaying how dino-birds evolved, their relationship to true birds and the evolution…

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