Terrible Claw

The Deinonychus were less than three feet long from head to tail, but their emerald plumage made them seem larger. Long wispy feathers sprouted from their heads and ran in a row down their backs.

The two-legged dinosaurs fled in all directions, screeching and hissing. Their mouths were filled with more than sixty sharp points, lined up like the teeth on a saw.

“They look like birds,” Callie observed.

“Yeah, birds with arms and hands instead of wings,” Tim said. “They’re acting more like a pack of dogs, though. Coyotes maybe.”

(From a recent visit to the American Museum of Natural history.)