The metre-long Microraptor, one of the smallest dinosaurs in the fossil record, had feathers on its arms, legs and tail. Its odd-looking five-wing gliding setup provides clues to the earliest evolution of flight, according to a new study in Nature Communications.

Most people still have a very last-century idea of what dinosaurs were like. No, T. rex didn't stand upright; lots of dinos were actually feathered, not leathery; and they may have been killed by a comet, not an asteroid.

An article over at the Cornell Chronicle looks into the issue of "cultural inertia" in our understanding of dinosaurs. When asked to draw a T. rex, perhaps the most well-known (in popular culture) of all dinosaurs, both young children and college students will draw an upright, small-armed, tail-dragging creature that looks like a slimmed-down Barney or a less-plasticky Rex from Toy Story.

Dolphins are great! Intelligent, charming, cute. This newly-discovered dolphin-like predator: maybe not so great.

A cache of feathers preserved in amber, dating from around 70 to 85 million years ago, was just found in Canada, showing that border between winged dinosaurs and the earliest avians. The study indicates that these feathers, relatively modern, were already appearing even before the non-avian dinosaurs were extinct.