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IELTS Practice Reading: Label Diagram ID: #56226 Medium Palaeontology
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The BBC series Planet Dinosaur used state-of-the-art computer graphics to bring to life the most impressive of those dinosaurs whose remains have been discovered in the past decade. One of these is Gigantoraptor erlianensis. Discovered in 2005. it stands more than three metres high at the hip and is the biggest bird-like dinosaur ever unearthed Yet its discoverer.  'The production team were filming me and a geologist digging out what we thought were sauropod bones.' says Xu. 'when I realised the fossils were something else entirely.' Gigantoraptor, as it later became known, turned out to be an oviraptorid, a therapod with a bird-like beak. Its size was staggering. 

The dromaeosaur tail and hind legs, however, were covered in what looked like fine proto feathers. That fossil turned out to be something special. In 2000. Xu named it Microraptor and revealed that it had probably lived in the treetops. Although it couldn't fly. its curved claws provided the first real evidence that dinosaurs could have climbed trees. Three years later. Xu and his team discovered a closely related Microraptor species which changed everything. 'Microraptor had two salient features.' Xu explains, long feathers were attached not just to its forearms but to its legs and claws. Then we noticed that these long feathers had asymmetrical vanes, a feature often associated with flight capability. This meant that we might have found a flying dinosaur.'

Fiorillo discovered the teeth of the Alaskan Troodon were double the size of those of its southern counterpart. 'Even though the morphology of individual teeth resembled that of Troodon. the size was significantly larger than the Troodon found in warmer climates. Fiorillo says that the reason lies in the Troodon's large eyes, which allowed it to hunt at dawn and at dusk - times when other dinosaurs would have struggled to see. In the polar conditions of Cretaceous Alaska, where the Sun would all but disappear for months on end, this proved a useful talent. Troodon adapted for life in the extraordinary light regimes of the polar world. With this advantage, it took over as Alaska's dominant therapod.' explains Fiorillo. Finding itself at the top of the food chain, the dinosaur evolved to giant proportions.

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curved claws
food chain
three metres
erlianensis
oviraptorid
sauropod bones
bird-like beak
asymmetrical vanes
dusk
hotter
warmer
dawn
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