[2] It is even suspected that the type specimen is a chimera, based on the fact that "there are elements of three different similarly sized lower legs included in the holotype.

The Bambiraptor skeleton was discovered in 1995 by 14-year-old fossil hunter Wes Linster, who was looking for dinosaur bones with his parents near Glacier National Park in Montana, United States.

Because of its completeness Florida Paleontology Institute Director Martin Shugar compared it to the Rosetta Stone that enabled archaeologists to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Yale paleontologist John Ostrom, who reintroduced the theory of bird evolution from dinosaurs after his 1964 discovery of Deinonychus in Wyoming, agreed, calling the specimen a "jewel", and telling reporters that the completeness and undistorted qualities of the bones should help scientists further understand the dinosaur-bird link.

[3] In 2000 it was named and described by David Burnham, Kraig Derstler, Phil Currie, Robert Bakker, Zhou Zhonge and John Ostrom as a new genus: Bambiraptor feinbergi.

[7] Research done by Phil Senter of the Lamar State College in Orange, Texas has indicated that Bambiraptor may have had mutually opposable first and third fingers and a forelimb maneuverability that would allow the hand to reach its mouth.

Burnham also offers an alternative hypothesis that a larger brain could be selected for as a result of hunting more agile prey items such as lizards and mammals.

Most paleontologists support Cooley's view, and subsequent discoveries [citation needed] confirmed that small dromaeosaurid dinosaurs like Bambiraptor were fully covered in feathers (see Dromaeosauridae for more information).