Late, late, late. If I had a large gold pocketwatch, I would be nervously checking it right now. I meant to link to and comment on Darren Naish's post on dinosauroids at, y'know, a reasonably short remove from its posting. Apparently time will not form my inner intuition appropriately for that. It is, of course, worth reading for its own lights.

No, post-Cretaceous maniraptorans wouldn’t end up looking like scaly tridactyl plantigrade humanoids with erect tailless bodies. They would be decked out with feathers and brightly coloured skin ornaments; have nice normal horizontal bodies and digitigrade feet; long, hard, powerful jaws; stride around on the savannah kicking the shit out of little mammals; and in the evenings they would stand together in the trees, booming out a duet of du du du-du, a deep noise that would reverberate for miles around.

All I wanted to add was a nod towards John McLoughlin's Toolmaker Koan, which is, as one might guess from the title, an attempt to figure out why an intelligent species might blow the hell out of itself, and how to stop it (us). But the humans in it encounter a charming dinosauroid race, the wheelin, which are divided into racial castes. The caste our humans most encounter is a sort of diplomat/hunter type, whose group hunts are as intricately choreographed as any ballet, and correspond most closely, perhaps, to human poetry. They're appropriately shaped, they come off as realistically alien yet evolutionarily reasonable, mentally, and although certain portions of the books have been Overtaken by Events, I can recommend it without reservation.

If I had my books I would quote a relevant passage. If I had my books. Indeed, I'm only getting to post this now because of the lovely weather out here, so I suppose I should count my blessings.