A recent discovery in South America is rewriting the history of dromaeosaurs. For those of you who don't habla dinosaurese, dromaeosaurs make up a group of carnivorous therepods from the Cretaceous period, including Velociraptor and Deinonychus. These new fossils seem to indicate that dromaeosaurs may have begun evolving before the Pangea split 180 million years ago.

In other recent dromaeosaur news, scientists hired by the BBC built a robotic recreation of a dromaeosaur leg, killer claw and all. Unfortuntaely, when tested on a variety of materials, the claw didn't have the terrifyingly effecient effect movies like Jurassic Park would have you believe.

[vis dinosaurnews]

UPDATE: The Discovery Channel has a picture of the robotic raptor claw tearing into a chunk of pig carcass [via engadget]