Birding in the Lower Bonne Femme Valley this morning, I caught sight of a wild turkey flock, moving in unison as they foraged across a fallow field, It reminded me of a scene from the blockbuster film, Jurassic Park.
Contrary to a popular assumption, dinosaurs were not reptiles though they lived in concert with some giant reptilian species. In fact, dinosaurs were warm-blooded creatures that gave rise to ancestral birds back in the mid-late Jurassic Period. It is thus no wonder that some modern birds harbor anatomic features and demonstrate behavior that remind us of the dinosaurs we have seen in films.
Having brought up Jurassic Park, I would be remiss not to mention that the film should have been titled Cretaceous Park. Most of the dinosaurs that were "brought back" at the featured facility lived during the Cretaceous Period (145 to 65 MYA), the last period of the Mesozoic Era. The Jurassic Period (200-145 MYA) preceded it but was also part of the dinosaur era.
