Small Wyoming dinosaur helps rewrite the evolutionary story of birds, flight

An artistic rendering of what Lori, scientifically known as Hesperornithoides miessleri, may have looked like when she was alive roughly 150 million years ago. Image by Gabriel Ugueto Scientists have long known that birds and dinosaurs are related, but as with many families, it's complicated. There are dinosaurs with feathers, but no wings, and dinosaurs with feathery wings that couldn't fly. Years of study and an abundance of new fossils in recent decades have left researchers making their best predictions as to whom is related to whom, and just where birds first emerged has remained elusive. Now, a small, chicken-sized dinosaur discovered by accident while excavating a much larger dinosaur in the Morrison Formation of Wyoming is helping researchers sort out these challenging family dynamics. Researchers in Wyoming were excavating a giant dinosaur known as supersaurus when they accidentally discovered a small, winged dinosaur now nicknamed Lori. Lori is helping rewrite the evolutionary relationship dinosaurs and modern birds.