#7029: — 10/13  at  01:02 PM
aww, cute! if my budgies slept on the ground instead of perched, the similarity would be eerie. (and if they had long, bony tails, of course.) any chance this family might have been feathered, do you know?

#7030: — 10/13  at  01:12 PM
What was the matrix it came out of like? Did it get flooded or buried in ash or do they know?

#7031: — 10/13  at  01:37 PM
Troodontids seem to have had the highest brain weight to body weight ratio of any dino, the goose analogy is fairly close PZ. Lovely fossil; I should look so good in 100 million years.

#7033: PZ Myers — 10/13  at  03:11 PM
From the paper:

The Lujiatun beds are alluvial deposits mainly comprising tuffaceous conglomerate debris flows, sandstones and mudstones. Some of the most fossiliferous locations are considered to be the result of instant catastrophic mass mortality events preserved in tuffaceous ashes up to 3 m in thickness.

#7037: Mrs Tilton — 10/13  at  03:47 PM
Holy cow -- that's lovely!

Thanks!

#7040: bitchphd — 10/13  at  06:47 PM
Ooh, it's so, so pretty! It looks exactly like a sleeping dragon. How cool is that?

#7041: ~DS~ — 10/13  at  06:56 PM
Poor little guy was buried in his sleep. Well I guess there are worse ways for a Cretaceous Dino to go.

#7053: — 10/13  at  10:45 PM
Hi, just wanted to say I love this column! I've been checking back daily, but never thought I had anything worth saying till today.

mei long is a beautiful name! In its original pronounciation (寐龙: mei4 long2) it means "Sleeping Dragon", but when I first saw the name I thought it was (美龙: mei3 long2), which means "Beautiful Dragon". Not a difficult mistake to make. Not only that, mei4 is a homophone for another word, 魅, which means "Charm". I like the multiple meanings.

(Oh, and it's named in Mandarin pinyin, by the way. Different Chinese dialects pronounce these same words differently.)

#7056: mattH — 10/14  at  12:56 AM
What an incredible find. Seeing behavior is so rare.

#7110: — 10/15  at  08:45 AM
Actually, if I am correct, Troodontids lost the brain-size record to Bambiraptor. Bambiraptor is a rather late Cretaceous dromaeosaur that preserves some very Archaeopteryx-like traits of the hips and such.

Troodontids do not really look much like ostriches. They looked like Velociraptors that have joined the Green Party. Like Velociraptors, they had sickle style claws on their feet, but they were reduced comparatively. The pubis pointed more forwards than we see in dromaeosaurs like velociraptor, but a good argument could be made this was a reversal. They had a longish snout with relatively stubby teeth in their jaws. They had well developed arms that were claimed at one time to possess well-developed grasping hands at their ends. In reality, the hands would have not had a great deal of grasping power, and a good argument could be made they were functionally didactyl (the hand possessed 3 digits but the 3rd was extremely gracile, and most likely was buried in a singular fleshy pad next to the second finger which was more pronounced)

Their braincases have been preserved better than many other small theropod dinosaurs, and endocasts have indicated some rather bird-like structures of the brain. Other pneumatic characteristics of the braincase itself matches up with both the dromaeosaurs, as well as birds in general.

The leg of at least one chinese Troodontids (Sinovenator) shows signs of a medial cnemial crest. This crest was found on the anterior proximal end of the tibia, and was unknown out side of birds before, and was not seen in most basal birds as well. This trait may, or may not have been developed separately from birds.

The picture you posted of Mei long does show a rather bird-like shape to the skull that was common to both basal birds, and certain supposed nonavian theropods. The metatarsus is extremely bird-like in my view, and I am not so certain how much of this is due to convergence between these related groups.