[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??

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[Fintan]

Dilong means Emperor dragon.
 

I'm not going there. Nuh-uh.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Not another prediction of evolutionary biology verified?????

Noooooooooo....!!!!

[aruanan]

Feathered ancestor of T. rex unearthed [Transitional species]

Ah, the bird as the ancestor to a dinosaur.

[eggman]

Ancestors of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex were clothed in delicate feathers

Sounds like there were gay dinosaurs. No wonder they became extinct.

[G Larry]

>But many palaeontologists have been predicting just such a find ever since the first evidence of a dinosaur with a feathery coat came from the same site in Liaoning in 1995.<

Oops!
Isn't that an acknowledged fraud?

[festus]

Goldarnit they went and dug up my great-uncle cletus......

[visualops]

Wow, another really big bird!

[mewzilla]

...helping to preserve the soft, feathery outlines.

Too bad they didn't offer a pic to help with the feather vs. fur question.

[bert]

And...it was of course warm blodded.