You want the whole list pinged for this?
Posted on 09/06/2005 10:02:44 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
THE popular image of Tyrannosaurus rex and other killer dinosaurs may have to be changed as a scientific consensus emerges that many were covered with feathers.
Most predatory dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurs and velociraptors have usually been depicted in museums, films and books as covered in a thick hide of dull brown or green skin. The impression was of a killer stripped of adornment in the name of hunting efficiency.
Gareth Dyke, a palaeontologist of University College Dublin, will tell the BA Festival of Science being held in the city that most such creatures were coated with delicate feathery plumage that could even have been multi-coloured. Fossil evidence that such dinosaurs were feathered is now “irrefutable”.
“The way these creatures are depicted can no longer be considered scientifically accurate,” he said. “All the evidence is that they looked more like birds than reptiles. Tyrannosaurs might have resembled giant chicks.”
The latest visualisation suggests that parts of Walking with Dinosaurs, the acclaimed BBC series, cannot be seen as scientifically valid. Similar criticisms might also be levelled at the Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park.
The Natural History Museum in London, which has a popular exhibition of robot dinosaurs, conceded this weekend that some of its permanent displays may have to be adapted to reflect the new findings.
The feather revelation follows a series of discoveries in fossil beds at Liaoning in northeast China where a volcanic eruption buried many dinosaurs alive. It also cut off the oxygen that would otherwise have rotted them away.
Some theropod (“beast-footed”) dinosaurs were preserved complete with feathery plumage. Theropod is the name given to predatory creatures that walked upright on two legs, balanced by a long tail.
The feathered finds include an early tyrannosaur, a likely ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, two small flying dinosaurs and five other predators. Feathers are thought to have evolved first to keep dinosaurs warm and only later as an aid to flight.
Such finds are significant in linking dinosaurs to modern birds. Most palaeontologists accept that birds are descended from dinosaurs but there is fierce debate over how this happened. At the Dublin conference, Dyke will present new evidence suggesting that dinosaurs evolved the ability to fly and that some even developed all four limbs into wings.
You want the whole list pinged for this?
Heh... without struggle there is no progress.
Of course, sometimes, there's also no progress with struggle.
Mostly, people just love struggle, regardless of the outcome.
;')
*shudder*
The echo of the... terrifying *smirk* noise heard far & wide.
Scientists Say 'Feathers' on Fossil Reptile Are Actually Long ScalesEarlier this year, researchers suggested that a small, lizard-like reptile known as Longisquama was studded with long feathers that enabled it to fly, or at least glide. Their interpretation would push back the ancestry of modern birds by 75 million years. Zoologist Hans-Dieter Sues of the University of Toronto and co-author Robert R. Reisz argue that the fine details do not support the feather interpretation. What appear to be feathers poking from the reptile's spine actually are long, thick scales that left cup-like impressions in surrounding rock. Feather advocates dismissed the Canadians' scale interpretation as "total nonsense." Oregon State paleontologist John Ruben, who co-authored the original Longisquama study, said the best fossils, he said, clearly show the creature's long appendages possess a concave-convex structure consistent with the bowed appearance of modern feathers. If Ruben's analysis is correct, it challenges the premise that birds arose from small, meat-eating dinosaurs.
by Rick Callahan
Nov 26 2000Unscrambling Dinosaur EggsSome 68 million years ago a female dinosaur laid 13 eggs in the flood plains near the Pyrenees Mountains of southern France. Fossils of the eggs themselves have provided a little information about dinosaur behavior -- that this particular species buried its eggs in the ground like turtles or crocodiles rather than laying them in a nest like birds.
by Kenneth Chang
Sept 27 1999
Ah, but at least he wouldn't run along flapping his wings to drive the 'defiler of territory' from his range.
The sheer embarrassment from hearing him sound like a huge turkey would probably be sufficient.
Naw. I just thought it might the type of article that would interest my pingees personally. Plus, it gave me a chance to post the first thing that came to mind when I read that particular line.
... *sigh* & what do I imagine?
A T-Rex wildly flapping his minsicule
arms, mouth gaping, full of teeth &
the sound... *gobble gobble gobble*
So far, 138+ views, not bad.
I have a whole new view of Turkey Frankfurters....
Yes, that is the mental image.
Oh, and he's stomping out of the treeline at the Pilgrims.
ROFL!!
... Full of barbed rejoinders.
Hot-Blooded or Cold-Blooded??
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/metabolism.html
The Evidence for Endothermy in Dinosaurs
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/endothermy.html
The Evidence for Ectothermy in Dinosaurs
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/ectothermy.html
Summary of the Debate
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/summarythermy.html
Great. Now I'm thinkin' about the dinosaurian guano...
But I doubt they tasted like chicken...
Hmm, probably not.
Probbaly more like hoatzin.
hehehe :-)
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