"Probably all dinosaurs were feathered," scientist concludes.
Photograph courtesy H. Tischlinger, Jura Museum Eichstätt
Posted on 07/03/2012 4:40:01 AM PDT by Renfield
A newfound squirrel-tailed specimen is the oldest known meat-eating dinosaur with feathers, according to a new study. The late-Jurassic discovery, study authors say, strikes down the image of dinosaurs as "overgrown lizards."
Unearthed recently from a Bavarian limestone quarry, the "exquisitely preserved" 150-million-year-old fossil has been dubbed Sciurumimus albersdoerferi—"Scirius" being the scientific name for tree squirrels.
Sciurumimus was likely a young megalosaur, a group of large, two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs. The hatchling had a large skull, short hind limbs, and long, hairlike plumage on its midsection, back, and tail....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
"Probably all dinosaurs were feathered," scientist concludes.
Photograph courtesy H. Tischlinger, Jura Museum Eichstätt
Ping
“The hatchling had a large skull, short hind limbs, and long, hairlike plumage on its midsection, back, and tail....”
Norwegian Blue ping.
[I’ve been pining for the Fnords]
Beautiful plumage!
If he weren’t embedded in that rock, why, he’d just fly away.
Fwooooooooooom!
I want to see Jurassic Park with feathered dinosaurs.
:-)
And Unicorns!!!
[well, *something* had to have eaten them all]
;D
That's the sad thing about the Jurassic Park trilogy ...there will come a time when it will be horribly dated, both in terms of the CGI used as well as the information given. On the CGI - there are some movies that I marveled at when I was a kid, and grimaced when I watched them again as an adult. On the information - we saw gray T-Rexs and Velociraptors, when apparently they were feathered and multi-colored.
Somebody please post the saber toothed squirrel from Ice Age.
How many times are these people going to be completely wrong before it becomes evident that they don’t know what they are talking about?
I don’t know why people assume they were brightly colored. Most birds are shades of white, grey, brown and black. They need to be camouflaged, too. I have a roadrunner who hangs out in the back yard every morning. He’s black, brown and white.
If he weren’t, it’d be much more difficult for him to hunt.
We notice the cardinal because it’s so noticeable. We make a note of it because it’s unusual.
Show me an owl or an eagle with red and blue feathers.
Some may have been, but I can’t see it being the norm.
How many times will someone on FR equate formulation of new theories based on more recent evidence as being “completely wrong”?
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Thanks Renfield. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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It makes me wonder about Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec “feathered serpent” god.
It's a reaction to the "We now know" phenomenon. By that I mean the media's habit of saying "It was once believed that [X]. However, we now know [Y]." The truth is, everything we once believed was at that time something that, at the time, we now 'knew.' In other words, that thing we now 'know' isn't something we really know... it's just an updated best guess.
If you have a “new theory” that is consistently contradicted by new and existing evidence, it’s not much of a theory.
I’d qualify it as a fantasy.
“Norweigian Blue”
It's a reaction to the "We now know" phenomenon. By that I mean the media's habit of saying "It was once believed that [X]. However, we now know [Y]." The truth is, everything we once believed was at that time something that, at the time, we now 'knew.' In other words, that thing we now 'know' isn't something we really know... it's just an updated best guess.
If it’s a young dinosaur, and they have feathers, wouldn’t this be like the downy fuzz you find on chicks?
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