Birds May Not Be Dinosaur Descendents

Everybody knows that the closest living descendents of the dinosaurs are birds.  Their evolutionary paths separated in the Jurassic Era, with the birds surviving the K-T extinction, and the dinosaurs dying out.  I know that's what I thought when I wrote about dinosaurs before.  This is all documented paleontological history, birds definitely came from dinosaurs.

Meet Scansoriopterix.  It was found in Inner Mongolia (which is in China, not Mongolia), and it was initially classified as a dinosaur.  But after the fossil underwent a thorough examination, it was found that Scansoriopterix lacks the spinal structure that all other dinosaurs have.  Instead, it is now believed that this animal is descended from creatures that predate the dinosaurs, and thus Scansoriopterix bears no particular relation to the dinosaurs.  This means that anything descended from Scansoriopterix would also not be descended from the dinosaurs.  So, birds aren't dinosaurs after all.  When you eat chicken for supper tomorrow, you're not eating a latter-day dinosaur. 

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