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Dinosaurs Connections

Aftermath of Extinction

How might dinosaurs have evolved if they had not gone extinct 65 million years ago?

Dale Russell, curator of fossil vertebrates at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Canada, believes that dinosaurs were evolving toward more human-like features toward the end of the Cretaceous period, including the development of a larger brain, forward-focused eyes, and bipedalism. Extrapolating these tendencies, he “evolved” a dinosaur called a Troodon. He came up with a bipedal creature he called a Dinosauroid, which, though reptilian in many ways, including its extremities and somewhat scaly skin, also looked very humanoid.