This article is more than 13 years old

This article is more than 13 years old

Velociraptor, the fearsome dinosaur made famous in the Jurassic Park films, had feathers and probably more closely resembled a big turkey than the killer screen dinosaur, scientists have discovered.

Velociraptor, which was much smaller in real life than its screen version, was a one-metre tall, two-legged predator that lived more than 70m years ago. Equipped with large claws on each leg, it was a close relative to the earliest birds.

In a study of the fossilised forearms of velociraptors found in Mongolia in 1998, palaeontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History found "quill knobs" - bumps where the feathers used for flight in modern birds are anchored to the bone with ligaments. His results are published today in the journal Science.

"The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like velociraptor," said Professor Norell.

"Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds."

Because of velociraptor's relatively short forelimbs, the feathers would not have helped it to fly.

The researchers speculated that the feathers could have been passed down from smaller ancestors that did fly but would have served other functions such as display, shielding nests, temperature control or to help stability and manoeuvring while running.