More Dinosaur News

It seems that there has been alot coming out of Liaonang, China lately. Earlier this month was the anouncement of a tyrranosaur with feathers, and now a new troodontid with a birdlike resting pose and a fossil "bird embryo" (shell not actually found). The new troodontid is what especially interests me. I don't consider the birdlike pose to be anything particularly special. People have acceped for a while now that dinosaurs such as this one were warm blooded and feathered, so it is no surprise to me that it would have tucked its head under its "wing" to stay warm. It's long tail is also curled around its body. What interests me about it is, as usual its braincase. You should see this thing. From the dorsal surface, the dermatocranium (all you can see of the brain case) looks exactly like a blown up version of Archaeopteryx's. Also, the little guy has a very Archaeopteryx look in genral to the whole head. Very exciting. I bet that if someone were to do a CT scan of this sucker they'd find even more similarities.
The other group that this individual strongly reminded me of was the ornithomimosaurs. In fact, until I saw the teeth, my first reaction was to call it an ornithomimid. I've heard talk lately of placing the troodontids as a sister group to ornithomimids as opposed to the dromaeosaurs and the birds as a sister group to both of those. I have no problem with that. There seem to be alot more troodontids in the literature lately than dromaeosaurs, so I feel that this sort of response is expected. Everyone want's their specimen to be the closest to birds.
One thing I found currious about the article was that it described the dinosaur as having a proportionately small head. Ok, maybe short, but not small. Head is about half the length of the torso and most of that is brain case. They made a comment that the reduction in size was crucial for flight and is responsible for alot of the other features associated with early birds. Well Duh!!! I've been saying that for over three years now! From allometry we know that the brain has to become proportionately larger compared to the body size as the size of the animal decreases. Having a larger, heavier brain just means that you have to shorten and lighten the rest of your face so it doesn't make you front heavy!