Feathered ancestor of T. rex unearthed [Transitional species]

Nature Magazine ^ | 06 October 2004 | Zeeya Merali

[PatrickHenry]

The crevo threads have been voluntarily suspended until the election, but we thought this news was important enough to warrant posting at this time.

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution Ping! This list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and maybe other science topics like cosmology.
See the list's description in my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail me to be added or dropped.

[RockinRight]

They dug up one of Theresa Heinz Kerry's relatives??

[Shryke]

Now you've gone and done it.

[evets]

Polly want a... finger?

[Dog Gone]

I'm puzzled. The description of the protofeathers sounds like hair, not feathers.

[FreedomFarmer]

Ummmm!

Tyrannoducken for Thanksgiving!

[nmh]

"Transitional species" ? LOL!

No evidence backs that up. It's just someones imagination at work trying to convince the sheeple to believe in "evolution".

Maybe my cat will morph into a bird soon too! LOL!

[JusPasenThru]

Its critical that we save this endangered species. Global warming is bound to kill it off. It lives in wetlands. Bush is responsible for all this.

I'd love to have one of those little criters for my backyard.

[cwd26]

LOL! ...

[Hegemony Cricket]

Well, it is tall, and apparently has good hair, I wonder about it's debating skills....

[Nick Danger]

It's just as well they're extinct. What with the hurricanes, the earthquakes, and the volcanoes, the last thing we need right now is flying meat-eaters the size of tractor-trailers.

[Old Professer]

It'll never fly, you shouldn't waste your time.

[orionblamblam]

> It's just someones imagination at work trying to convince the sheeple to believe in "evolution".

My congratulations on an excellent satire of the usual Creationist claptrap.

[najida]

ahhhhh,
I want one!

[Centurion2000]

Feathered dinosuars on the ground ?

That's one hell of a turkey shoot.

[AndrewC]

Holtz hopes that the new evidence will convince the scientific community that feathers evolved on dinosaurs long before the appearance of birds.

Archaeopteryx is still older. Stated before, anything found in this formation will still be younger than a fully feathered Archie.

[capitan_refugio]

You are correct on both points. Protofeathers probably served a similar function as hair in thermoregulation.

[Truth Table]

OK, how do I field dress it?

[VadeRetro]

The origin of birds from this group is further supported by this find.

Featherlike coverings were probably pretty widespread in at least the smaller-sized theropod dinosaurs. So far, only a few fossilization sites have allowed the kind of preservation which would let us see such detail. This paucity of feather evidence has allowed skepticism of the whole idea, but here's another example for a subgroup not previously found with feathers. The more subgroups that have them, the farther back down the tree you put the common ancestor that first grew them.

One reason this matters, the somewhat older Archaeopteryx from limestone deposits in Europe had a dinosaurian skeleton (apparently closely related to some of the Liaoning China species) but a very impressive set of feathers. Today's find makes it easier to state that many of Archy's contemporaries were also feathered. (We just don't have well-enough preserved fossils for all of them.)