Dinosaurs may have been a fluffy lot ~~ now they tell us....

The Sunday Times ^ | September 04, 2005 | Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

[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.

This week, however, a leading expert on dinosaur evolution will tell the British Association, the principal conference of British scientists, that this image is wrong.

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.

[Buggman]

So does this mean that Big Bird is really a velociraptor? That might explain all those rumors of kids disappearing on the Sesame Street set . . .

[Clemenza]

More Godzookie than Godzilla?

[Physicist]

[RightWhale]

Tyrannosaurs might have resembled giant chicks

It's one thing to have a flock of 50 chickadees in your yard, but this group would tear up the hedges even worse than moose do.

[VadeRetro]

I have never seen a tyrannosaurus that looked like a giant chick. I have seen some big chicks that looked like dinosaurs, but that's another topic.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Implicit in this is that they were warm-blooded.

Why else have feathers?

[RightWingAtheist]

The paleoartist Gregory Paul has always insisted on drawing most of his theropods, with the exception of some of the larger carnosaurs, as being feathered. His marvelous book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World was somewhat controversial in this regard when it was published nearly twenty years ago, but instead, it now seems that Paul was ahead of the field in guessing what these magnificient creatures really looked like.

[RightWingAtheist]

I have seen some big chicks that looked like dinosaurs, but that's another topic.

Dammit VR, I was hoping to finally get a thread without a single Helen Thomas reference! :)

[RightWingAtheist]

Longisquama. In all likelihood, the feathers/scale/whatever were used for mating display than flight or thermal insulation:

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Is that for real!

[RightWingAtheist]

It's a sketch which is based on the first fossilized skeleton found of Longisquama. I don't know if the general consensus as to what the creature looked like has change in the thirty-five years since, but it hasn't changed much if Google Image Search is any indication.

[Dustbunny]

Wow, another arrogant theory debunked.

[escapefromboston]

Lame.
When I was a kid I used to have plenty of books about Dinosaurs because I thought they were cool. Now that they look like chickens I doubt I would have been particularly interested.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I may have to keep this news from my youngest grandson.

[Renfield]

Dude! Where can I get a suit like that?? It's just what I need to wear to church, and at appeals to the Property Value Administrator.

[Renfield]

Of course they (at least, the "bird-hipped" dinosaurs) were warm blooded. That issue is pretty well settled.

Feathers make good insulation.

[RightWingAtheist]

Actually, theropods are saurischians, or "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs. The ornithischians ("bird-hipped" dinosaurs) included the hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, stegosaurs and ankylosaurs, among others, but they were all herbivorous and are not among the candidates for being ancestors of present-day birds.

[ForGod'sSake]

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