The News
Flocks of birds may have taken wing with dinos
By Katy Human Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 04/04/2007 02:19:00 AM MDT

Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado at Denver holds some of the bird tracks believed to be 125 million years old. The tracks show a toe formation seen in today's roadrunners, owls, parrots and woodpeckers.
Roadrunner-like birds skittered around under the feet of dinosaurs 125 million years ago, according to ancient tracks found in fossilized Chinese mud two years ago.
Denver paleontologist Martin Lockley has now officially described the tracks, and experts say the discovery means there were many more types of birds flitting around dinosaurs than once thought.
"This is remarkable, because there are zero fossil footprints of this pattern in the entire fossil record," Lockley said. "Zero."
Lockley, a researcher at the Dinosaur Track Museum at the University of Colorado at Denver, has been working with Chinese researchers for years.

The Research
Read the research behind this story in the journal Naturwissenschaften.