Wild Things: I saw dinosaurs this morning

A southern cassowary in Australia. ED KANZE PHOTO

By ED KANZE

There was a time when all our home planet’s dinosaurs were believed to be extinct. 

Then there was a time when birds were believed to be closely related to dinosaurs. That time, too, has vanished from the Earth.

Now the science is clear. Birds are not closely related to dinosaurs. Birds are dinosaurs. 

It turns out that every dinosaur did not perish after a comet struck the Earth 65 million years ago. If you go to the window right now and look outside, you might see one.

Birds, you see, belong to a subset of dinosaurs known as the maniraptorans. Oviraptors (known from fossils) are also members of this group.

They form a subset of an even larger dinosaur group known as the coelurosaurs. The most celebrated coelurosaur is Tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed “T. rex”.

The coelurosaurs fit into an even greater group known as the theropods. 

Theropods are one of several kinds of dinosaurs that paleontologists round up and brand as saurischians. 

One saurischian dinosaur I’m seeing a good deal of lately is the great blue heron. Get near this gangly maniraptoran, and its dinosaur credentials seem the opposite of far-fetched. Close-fetched? Something like that.

First of all, there’s the reptilian eye. As it studies me, I am glad to be too large for the heron to swallow. As the heron stalks fish and frogs and other animate morsels, I, camera in hand, stalk the heron. When it moves, I move. When it freezes, I freeze. We keep eyes riveted on our targets. The dinosaur and I employ a hunting technique that has been in practice a long, long time.

I see the saurichian dinosaur’s bill, sharp-pointed and lethal. The heron is, if I’m not mistaken, catching tiny fish called mudminnows. Once the heron fixes its merciless eyes on one, the fish doesn’t have much of a chance.

I study the heron’s legs. They’re covered in skin that’s black, leathery, and scaly. It looks like dinosaur hide. It is dinosaur hide.

Each time the heron takes a step, I get a look at its long-toed feet, the toes terminating in claws that would look at home in the American Museum of Natural History Hall of Dinosaurs.

Once in my life, I had a chance to feel what lesser creatures must have felt in the Jurassic, Triassic and Cretaceous periods when they found themselves near carnivorous saurischians. 

I was in Queensland, in the northeastern corner of Australia. My brave, adventurous wife, Debbie, and I had gone in search of what is likely the world’s most dangerous bird: the southern cassowary. It is a creature of the rainforest, where it feeds largely on the fruits of trees and minds its own business. 

However, when a cassowary feels threatened, or when a male cassowary doing daddy day care believes that its young are threatened, it is capable of inflicting a fatal injury on a human. Damage is done with the innermost of the bird’s three toes. This toe bears a dagger-like claw 4 inches or so in length. 

We’d spotted a cassowary at the thrilling but disconcerting distance of 12 feet or thereabouts. It was a male, built like a linebacker and perhaps weighing 100 pounds or so, with brilliant red and blue wattles, turquoise eye highlights, and a big horn-like fin on top of its head. The massive legs, toes and stiletto claws caught our eyes, too. So did the tan juvenile that promptly appeared to keep company with its dad.

I dropped to my knees and began fishing in a pack for appropriate camera gear. The cassowaries seemed unperturbed, so I felt reasonably safe. But the feeling didn’t last. Digging deep for the right lens, I felt something rough and hot pushing against my right arm. The young cassowary, the size of a big rooster, had run over and thrust its head into my pack.

As I looked to the big male bird, the protector, terror swept over me. I could see the lethal claws, unnervingly near. Happily, father cassowary didn’t seem in the least concerned. In fact, he turned away and began pecking at something on the ground.

It’s not often as a birdwatcher that I feel in danger from the objects of my affection and interest. But that afternoon in Queensland, I felt as an early mammal might have when a T. rex came sniffing around the neighborhood. Are birds really dinosaurs? That day I became a believer.