The recently discovered fossil of a primitive winged creature, which has added new fuel to the scientific debate over whether modern birds evolved from dinosaurs, has been named in honor of Yale paleontologist John Ostrom, one of the earliest proponents of the birds-into-dinosaurs theory.
Dubbed Rahona ostromi ("Ostrom's menace from the clouds"), the fossil was uncovered in 1995 on the island of Madagascar by Catherine Forster of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Scott Sampson of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Dating from 65 million to 70 million years ago, about the time of the mass extinction of dinosaurs, Rahona ostromi was a raven-sized creature with a two-foot wingspan, feathers and a sickle-shaped claw on its second toe designed for slashing prey. Such "killing claws" have previously only been found on certain types of therapod dinosaurs, such as deinonychus (literally "terrible claw"), the species of dinosaur discovered by Ostrom in Montana in 1964. The presence of this claw in the Madagascar fossil has been hailed by some scientists as evidence of the bird-dinosaur link, and dismissed by others who contend that the fossilized bones must be from two completely different creatures.
Adding even more fuel to the debate over whether birds are descended from dinosaurs is the recent discovery in China's Gobi Desert of a flightless, turkey-like dinosaur that was able to move its snout up and down like a bird. Some scientists believe that this creature, named Shuvuuia deserti -- which dates from 70 million years ago -- and its close cousins may prove to be the most primitive birds known aside from Archaeopteryx, a feathered animal that lived 150 million years ago. It was his study of Archaeopteryx that led Ostrom to revive the concept first proposed 100 years ago, that birds are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs.
Ostrom, who is also author of the much-debated theory that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded, is professor emeritus of geology and geophysics, editor of the American Journal of Science, and curator emeritus of vertebrate paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, where he is also editor emeritus of the Peabody Museum Bulletin and Postilla.