From Jeff Hecht, Auburndale, Massachusetts, US
As the reporter who broke the story of the discovery of feathered dinosaurs, I enjoyed Michael Benton’s feature (16 October, p 43). It was in fact Â鶹´«Ã½ that carried my story, just before the work was unveiled at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Before the meeting, I picked up reports of a surprising discovery in China. After some detective work, a contact told me it was “a little feathered dinosaur”. I persuaded the news editor to squeeze it into the upcoming issue. To follow up, I took the train from Boston to New York and slept on my sister’s couch in the suburbs so I could attend the meeting. I then went on to write about palaeontologists travelling to China to see the feathered fossil.
This was one of the most exciting stories I have covered, one that revolutionised our understanding of dinosaurs and birds.
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