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Microraptor
Click here for more Microraptor Pictures
Microraptor was a very small dinosaur that lived in
Northeast China
during the Cretaceous period,
about 120 million years ago.
The initial discovery and naming of Microraptor was somewhat controversial.
It was initially described based on a patchwork of unrelated dinosaur
fossils
that had been attached to each other (a "chimeric" specimen) to produce
a forgery, and this forgery had been smuggled from
China to the
United States.
It turned out however that within the forgery were the first
fossils
of Microraptor (other fossils have
subsequently been found).
Microraptor has feathers, and is unusual as it has flight feathers on both its arms/hands and
on its legs/feet (it also had feathers on its body, and a diamond-shaped group of feathers on
its tail). It is not entirely clear how it used these feathers, and scientists have debated
whether the animal parachuted from trees or was able to take off from groudn. What is
certain, is that in flight it would have used all four wings. We do not currently know
whether this is a side branch in the evolution of birds, or whether bird ancestors developed
flight through an early four-winged stage (as early as
1915 some paleontologists suggested that birds may have had yet-to-be-discovered four-winged ancestor,
which they named "Tetrapteryx").
Microraptor was a carnivore (meat-eater) that lived about 120 million years ago
Related Information & Resources
See Also
Microraptor Facts
Here is a summary of some of the key facts about Microraptor:
- Microraptor was a genus of dinosaur.
- "Microraptor" means "small thief".
- Microraptor was a member of the Saurischia ("lizard-hipped") order of dinosaurs. What this means, is that although Microraptor was not closely related to lizards, it did have similarly shaped pelvic bones.
- Microraptor was a Theropod - a member of a group of related bipedal dinosaurs that included the ancestors of birds (although Microraptor was not itself an ancestor of birds).
- Microraptor lived about 120 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
- Microraptor lived in Northeast China.
- Microraptor was a carnivore (meat-eater).
- Microraptor was about 1½ to 2¾ feet (46 to 84 centimeters) long.
- Microraptor weighed up to 2¼ pounds (1 kilogram).
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Microraptor Books
Here are some books from Amazon.com:
Disclosure: Products details and descriptions provided by Amazon.com. Our company may receive a payment if you purchase products from them after following a link from this website.
By Rebecca Rissman
Capstone Press
Paperback (32 pages)
 | List Price: $7.95*
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Click Here | Product Description:
Raptors like Velocirpator were small, deadly dinosaurs. These carnivores and omnivores may have looked like birds, but they couldn't get off the ground. Bold images, colorful maps, and interesting facts take readers back to a time when these deadly hunters walked the earth. This book supports common core standards. |
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By Joe Lillington
Flying Eye Books
Released: 2016-10-11
Hardcover (40 pages)
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Click Here | Product Description:
It was a very special day for Neffy the Microraptor—she would be taking her first flight. But when Neffy spread her wings she didn't know what she was supposed to do! Will she learn in time to join her sisters and escape the predators on the ground?
In this informative and fact-based story, Joe Lillington takes the reader back to the time of dinosaurs as we follow young Neffy in her first attempt at flying. Along the way, she meets other friendly dinosaurs (and some not so friendly ones), all illustrated in Lillington's beautiful style full of character. |
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Paperback
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By Don Lessem
Little Brown & Co
Hardcover (32 pages)
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Click Here | Product Description:
Historical photographs and bright paintings bring to life raptors, the least known member of the dinosaur family, for young readers while a factual text discusses and describes these carnivorous creatures, their habits, and recent advances in dinosaur paleontology. |
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By Sankar Chatterjee
imusti
Hardcover (392 pages)
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Click Here | - Johns Hopkins University Press
Product Description:
A small set of fossilized bones discovered almost thirty years ago led paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee on a lifelong quest to understand their place in our understanding of the history of life. They were clearly the bones of something unusual, a bird-like creature that lived long, long ago in the age of dinosaurs. He called it Protoavis, and the animal that owned these bones quickly became a contender for the title of "oldest known bird." In 1997, Chatterjee published his findings in the first edition of The Rise of Birds. Since then Chatterjee and his colleagues have searched the world for more transitional bird fossils. And they have found them. This second edition of The Rise of Birds brings together a treasure trove of fossils that tell us far more about the evolution of birds than we once dreamed possible. With no blind allegiance to what he once thought he knew, Chatterjee devours the new evidence and lays out the most compelling version of the birth and evolution of the avian form ever attempted. He takes us from Texas to Spain, China, Mongolia, Madagascar, Australia, Antarctica, and Argentina. He shows how, in the "Cretaceous Pompeii" of China, he was able to reconstruct the origin and evolution of flight of early birds from the feathered dinosaurs that lay among thousands of other amazing fossils. Chatterjee takes us to where long-hidden bird fossils dwell. His compelling, occasionally controversial, revelations―accompanied by spectacular illustrations―are a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in the evolution of "the feathered dinosaurs," from vertebrate paleontologists and ornithologists to naturalists and birders. |
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By Don Lessem
Millbrook Press TM
Released: 2013-08-01
Kindle Edition (40 pages)
 | | Product Description:
"Dino" Don Lessem brings readers face-to-face with various dinosaur species, detailing their habitats, way of life and how they became extinct. An acclaimed dinosaur expert, Don Lessem has written more than 30 children's books, writes a popular dinosaur column in Highlights magazine, and was an adviser for Jurassic Park. Take a trip through dinosaur time to meet these deadly dinosaurs face-to-face: The Variraptor had pointy teeth with grooves like steak knives to saw through meat! The Draeomaeosaurus was the first raptor ever discovered. It had a very large brain! The Microraptor was no larger than a crow and is the closet known relative to birds! Plus, you'll get to know Utahraptor, Deinonychus, Megaraptor, Pytoraptor, and Velociraptor. |
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By Federico Agnolin
Federico L Agnolin
Released: 2013-02-27
Paperback (108 pages)
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Although consensus exists among researchers that birds evolved from coelurosaurian theropods, paleontologists still debate the identification of the group of coelurosaurians that most closely approaches the common ancestor of birds. The last 20 years witnessed the discovery of a wide array of avian-like theropods that has considerably amplified the anatomical disparity among deinonychosaurians, some of which resemble Archaeopteryx more than Deinonychus. Among these newly discovered theropods that show remarkable bird-like characteristics are the four-winged theropods Microraptor and Anchiornis, and the unenlagiids Unenlagia, Buitreraptor, and Rahonavis. A bizarre group of minute-sized coelurosaurs, the Scansoriopterygidae, also exhibits some avian similarities that lead some authors to interpret them as more closely related to birds than other dinosaurs. With the aim to explore the phylogenetic relationships of these coelurosaurians and birds, we merged recently published integrative databases, resulting in significant changes in the topological distribution of taxa within Paraves. We present evidence that Dromaeosauridae, Microraptoria, Unenlagiidae, and Anchiornis + Xiaotingia form successive sister taxa of Aves, and that the Scansoriopterygidae are basal coelurosaurians not closely related to birds. The implications in the evolutionary sequence of anatomical characters leading to birds, including the origin of flight, are also considered in light of this new phylogenetic hypothesis. |
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By Don Lessem
Millbrook Press TM
Released: 2013-08-01
Kindle Edition (32 pages)
 | | Product Description:
"Dino" Don Lessem brings readers face-to-face with various dinosaur species, detailing their habitats, way of life and how they became extinct. An acclaimed dinosaur expert, Don Lessem has written more than 30 children's books, writes a popular dinosaur column in Highlights magazine, and was an adviser for Jurassic Park. Take a trip through dinosaur time to meet these smart dinosaurs face-to-face: Troodon were the smartest dinosaurs! They would dig their prey (small rodents) out of the ground and could predict the movements of bugs! Giganotosaurus can recognize many dinosaurs from very far away by their smell! The Deinonychus worked together to sneak up on and surround their prey! Plus, you'll get to know Gallimimus, Laellynasaura, Microraptor, and Tyrannosaurus Rex! |
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By John Jackson
Released: 2013-12-23
Kindle Edition (386 pages)
 | | Product Description:
[NOTE TO CRITICS: If the science in this book is valid, so are the criticisms I make: bad science is propagated through failing to address the central scientific issues, and through blocking the views of those doing useful work. I invite any potential critics who can't cope with research-level science themselves but like the sound of their own voice, or want to pretend that I don't have science degrees and they do, or who are in love with the bad scientists I mention, to bolster my case by avoiding the scientific issues in their comments. They can complete the picture by commenting anonymously and invalidating any attack on my reputation by showing they lack one themselves!]
In this revolutionary 100k word book with 70 illustrations, John Jackson (artificial intelligence researcher, biological psychologist, and information scientist), brings long-overdue modern insights to a field he found stuck in the 1960’s. He clarifies the evolution of those feathered, fanged and strangely unfathomable stars of evolution, and provides a sorely-needed 14-point definition of science. Landmarks in bird evolution are detailed, including a friendly, cogent, but fairly thorough explanation of the bizarre intricacies and evolution of bird breathing; new analysis and elucidation of the four-winged flying style of microraptors; an overdue decent experimental scientific analysis of the use of Velociraptor’s predatory foot claw (it WAS deadly after all); untying of the Gordian knot of the family tree of troodonts, dromaeosaurs, primitive birds... and feathers; a survey of current knowledge of bird families along with thoughts on their extinction and survival patterns; details of how to write cladogram (family tree) generating programs, along with some important new guidelines for that discipline; a guide to major currents in dinobird palaeontology over the last twenty years... and finally the strange revelations resulting from using 21st century philosophy of science on human and dog evolution.
Revealing the story of dinobird evolution requires competence in a variety of fields, yet most palaeontologists start work with only a geology degree. Wouldn’t a biological degree help when studying animals? (A bit, but it’s not enough.) And is the palaeontologists’ understanding of their computer program for discovering family relationships spoiled by their surprising lack of qualifications in statistical algorithms? Are they right to insist evolution always took the straightest possible line, or is that view due to incompetence in that field – not to mention others such as the philosophy of science? Is their failure to quote the jargon, essential concepts, and even key workers in the core disciplines underlying palaeontology, reason to doubt their judgement, or does a geology degree genuinely grant such superior insight into these other fields that specialists in them can be ignored?
For years, palaeontologists have shunned outside experts, claiming that they alone, through organising excavations, running museums and relying on a 50-year-old computerised algorithm, are the best interpreters of biological evolution. Journalists have pandered to the palaeontologists: the BBC has persistently ignored revolutions in three major branches of vertebrate palaeontology, never having mentioned Aaron Filler, Janice Koler-Matznick, or the theories or name of Greg Paul, the most exciting and insightful dinobird scientist for over 20 years, and peerless dinobird draughtsman. Jackson defends and builds on Paul’s work including art commissioned from him, and shows how part of Paul’s theory fits with part of an earlier one, long wrongly abused but here vindicated.
The author’s broad background in disciplines where getting your theories right matters, and his independence, allow the book to tidy old muddles, put palaeontology back on its feet, and point out genuine solutions to riddles of the evolution of humans, dogs, and of course dinobirds.
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By S. H. et al. Hwang
American Museum of Natural History
Paperback
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Microraptor Toys
Here are some toys/games from Amazon.com:
Disclosure: Products details and descriptions provided by Amazon.com. Our company may receive a payment if you purchase products from them after following a link from this website.
By Schleich
Schleich
Toy
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Lowest New Price: $14.99*
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Click Here | - Utahraptor, Velociraptor and Microraptor were feathered raptors
- None of these three were actually able to fly!
- Great start or addition to your Schleich collection!
Product Description:
All Schleich figures are lovingly hand-painted with detailed modeling and allow children to learn as they play. Utah raptor, Velociraptor and micro raptor were feathered raptors. Dinosaur researchers found quills on the arms of a Velociraptor, even flight feathers on micro raptor. They believe that Utah raptor had feathers too. However, none of the three was actually able to fly. |
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PNSO
Toy
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Click Here | - Size: about 4.76 inches in length, 4.6 inches in width
Product Description:
This is NOT A KID’S TOY. ONLY SUITABLE FOR AGE 14+
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Dino Mecard
Toy
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Click Here | - Korean TV animated series "Dino MECARD" (Turning Mecard Follow-up series) character item
- Jaw of Microraptor figure moves
- Components : 1 Tiny dinosaur figure (MICRO) , 1 Microraptor figure
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By Schleich
SCHLEICH
Released: 2018-01-01
Toy
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Click Here | - Velociraptor with special paintwork!
- With movable arms!
Product Description:
The Schleich figures are modelled with attention to detail, hand-painted with care, and provide educationally valuable playtime. The Velociraptor, Compsognathus, and Micro raptor were some of the smallest raptors. From head to tail, the Velociraptor was a mere 2 m long. The Compsognathus was about half as long and the Micro raptor's body length was only 40-80 cm. When they were hungry, however, they even preyed on animals that were bigger than them. |
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Jurassic World Toys
Released: 2018-04-16
N/a Toy
 | List Price: $19.99*
Lowest New Price: $9.97*
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Click Here | - Get ready for thrilling action and adventure with Jurassic World
- Straight from the film, Indoraptor wreaks havoc and fear with his mere presence
- Act out ferocious battle scenes and relive all the exciting adventure of the movie
Product Description:
Get ready for thrilling action and adventure with Jurassic World! There's a mysterious villain stalking the area and he's after anything or anyone that moves! Straight from the film, Indoraptor wreaks havoc and fear with his mere presence. His ominous features include slick black scales, long arms with dagger-like claws and extra articulation that he will use to catch anyone that crosses him. Act out ferocious battle scenes with Indoraptor and relive all the exciting adventure of the movie! Colors and decorations may vary. |
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By Schleich
Schleich North America
Accessory
 | List Price: $11.99*
Lowest New Price: $10.18*
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Click Here | - Hand painted
- Educational value
Product Description:
All Schweich figures are lovingly hand-painted with detailed modelling and allow children to learn as they play. Utah raptor was a fast, agile Raptor, which would hunt herbivorous dinosaurs. |
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Papo
Released: 2018-06-15
Multicolor Toy
 | List Price: $27.99*
Lowest New Price: $19.65*
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Click Here | - Stimulate and inspire imagination of children
- Designed in France
- Highly detailed and durable
Product Description:
Imagine your own Jurassic time with Papo highly detailed dinosaurs. The wide range of dinosaurs will let children create their own adventures including the legendary T-Rex, the Velociraptor, the Pteranodon, the Triceratops and more. Papo is a reference in the world of figurines Thanks to the originality of its products and the extreme care taken with product quality and safety. In an age of mass consumption and throwaway goods, Papo remains true to its wish to produce fine toys that last over time and can be passed on from generation to generation. The range of products offers a wealth of 12 different universes ranging from animals made with astonishing degrees of realism to original characters from imaginary worlds. |
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Creative Beast Studio
Released: 2019-11-15
Multicolor Toy
 | Lowest New Price: $69.99*
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Click Here | - From Creative Beast Studio
- 7 points of articulation
- Main base designed to fit with existing deluxe raptor bases
Product Description:
From Creative Beast Studio. The forest environment accessory pack Includes one 6” long microraptor GUI action figure featuring seven points of articulation with foot base, one over-sized main base, various diorama parts, a small posing rod and a deluxe Raptor jumping rod. Main base is designed to fit with existing deluxe Raptor bases. Diorama accessories and posing rods are interchangeable between all beasts of the Mesozoic: Raptor Series ACCESSORY packs and deluxe figure bases. Recommended for ages 15 and up. |
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Safari Ltd.
Toy
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Click Here | - Each figure includes an descriptive hangtag in 5 languages
- We take pride in the quality, innovation and design that have characterized our products for over 3 generations
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Safari Ltd.
Toy
 | Lowest New Price: $8.99*
Usually ships in 24 hours*
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Click Here | - BIRD LIKE DINOSAUR: Microraptor was a small, feathered dinosaur that occupied the forested wetlands of early Cretaceous China. About the size of a raven, it had large feathers on its arms and legs. Despite its bird-like appearance, Microraptor also had several features typical of dinosaurs, including rows of sharp teeth, claws on its hands, and a long, bony tail.
- MADE WITH INDUSTRY-LEADING STANDARDS: All Safari Ltd. figurines have been individually hand painted with careful detail. They feature quality construction from BPA, phthalate, and lead-free materials to ensure your family's safety.
- PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS: This figure has a wingspan of 7 inches and is 5.25 inches long. It has a bird-like black plumage similar to modern crows and ravens. Recommended Age: 3+. Size: 5.27" L x 7.02" W.
Product Description:
Microraptor was a small, feathered dinosaur that occupied the forested wetlands of early Cretaceous China. About the size of a raven, it had large feathers on its arms and legs. Despite its bird-like appearance, Microraptor also had several features typical of dinosaurs, including rows of sharp teeth, claws on its hands, and a long, bony tail. This dinosaur may have used its sharp claws to scramble up the trunks of trees, and then leaped from the canopy, gliding from tree to tree. Microraptor lived in a forested wetland ecosystem known as the Jehol. The Jehol ecosystem was very rich and Microraptor was an opportunistic hunter, feeding on a diverse range of prey such as insects, lizards, and fish. Like all Safari Ltd products, this figurine has been individually hand painted, features quality construction from phthalate and lead-free materials, and includes an educational hangtag in 5 languages. Realistic, educational, and fun, this figurine is suitable for a range of interests, including collectors, enthusiasts, teachers, and kids. Admire it on a shelf, use it in the classroom, or simply enjoy playing with it. This figure has a wingspan of 7 inches and is 5.25 inches long. It has a bird-like black plumage similar to modern crows and ravens. |
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