Raptors were already bad-ass enough. They were the geniuses of their day, quick on their feet, with sharp binocular vision, long, agile arms tipped with slashing claws, and in most species each foot was adorned with a retractable switch-blade knife. Some could even fly. Now it looks like at least one kind and possibly others were venomous as well:
Sinornithosaurus millenii, a dinosaur about the size of a turkey, had grooved fangs for channelling venom and a pocket in the upper jaw that probably held venom glands, scientists have discovered. The anatomy is similar to that of “rear-fanged” snakes such as the boomslang, which do not inject poison directly through front fangs but funnel it along grooved teeth as they pierce the skin of their prey.
Sinornithosaurus, shown left courtesy of my talented friend and dino illustrator extraordinaire James Robbins, rose to fame as the first dinosaur fossil found so well preserved that what looked to be fuzzy feathers were clearly visible. Soon other feathered remains were found, and the dino-bird connection received a big boost.
Raptors like the turkey sized Troodontids (Anchiornis Huxleyi illustrated lower left via the Guardian) and Sinornithosaurus probably specialized in smaller prey, like mammals, meaning our direct, remote ancestors. A race of intelligent raptors might well farm and breed mammals just like humans do today.
Tasty early primates like the adorable Purgatorious shown right might have been high on their list of domestic delicacies.
We're incredibly lucky, all mammals are. If not for a fortuitous extinction event 65 million years ago, little, burrowing, fast breeding rat-like hairy mammals would never have had the chance to radiate into new econiches, from whales to bats, and of course, humans. And given 65 million years, there's no telling how smart raptors might have eventually become. A planet ruled by intelligent, carnivorous dinosaurs. What a world that would have been.
Any alien observer looking in on earth back in the Cretaceous would be hard-pressed to guess that the tiny nocturnal mammals would soon over take the reptilian giants dominating the land and sea. If not for a wandering space rock smashing into the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, and a subsequent climatic catastrophe 10 million years later, they probably never would have, and we wouldn't be here. Instead, perhaps, there would be creatures with rows of razor sharp teeth, feathered arms, brilliant bird-eyes, and we now suspect a venomous bite, examining the fossil remains of their ancestors, and ours. And who knows, maybe some of them would imagine what might have been had the evolutionary dice landed differently.
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