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About Caudipteryx:
If any single creature has conclusively settled the debate about the relationship between birds and dinosaurs, it's Caudipteryx. The fossils of this turkey-sized dinosaur reveal startlingly birdlike characteristics, including feathers, a short, beaked head, and distinctly avian feet. For all its resemblance to birds, though, paleontologists agree that Caudipteryx was unable to fly--making it an intermediate species between land-bound dinosaurs and flying birds.
However, not all scientists think Caudipteryx has settled the dinosaur/bird debate. One school of thought maintains that this creature descended from a species of bird that gradually lost the ability to fly (the same way penguins gradually evolved from flying ancestors). As with all dinosaurs reconstructed from fossils, it's impossible to know (at least with the evidence we now have) exactly where Caudipteryx stood on the dinosaur/bird spectrum.
