I love this. There have certainly been a number of really illuminating discoveries lately.
From the Sunday Times - Times Online
www.timesonline.co.uk/article...,00.html
Dinosaurs may have been a fluffy lot
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
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.
From the Sunday Times - Times Online
www.timesonline.co.uk/article...,00.html
Dinosaurs may have been a fluffy lot
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
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.
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Fluffy Dinosaurs
Wed, September 14, 2005 - 3:55 PMHa. Thanks for posting this. Que interesante indeed.
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Re: Fluffy Dinosaurs
Wed, July 19, 2006 - 9:06 AM
I've been getting a sense from the discoveries of the last decade or so that dinosaurs grew feathers the way that mammals grow hair. Which is to say that all dinosaurs had some degree of feathering, but depending on the size of the animal and the climate that it found itself living in this may have ranged from a light down with occasional thicker patches either for decoration or to protect certain areas -- similar to the hair on an elephant or for that matter on a human -- to a heavy down with an overburden of thicker feathers, like the fur on a bear or woolly mammoth.
Birds have excellent vision and generally see in color. It is very likely that a lot of dinosaur groups also had good color vision. Giving that there would have been an obvious evolutionary advantage in sporting various kinds of colored feathers -- for display or camoflague. The big carnivores and largest herbivores, which as adults would have had little to fear and little ability to hide in any case, would have gone for display, and might have had striking plumages, including feathered crests. Their feathers would have been primarily decorative as an animal that large has little problem retaining its internal heat. Smaller dinosaurs would have camoflagued themselves against predation by the larger ones; they might have been dun-colored like pheasants. The feathers on the smaller dinosaurs would have also had a more important function in keeping their owners warm, especially in the case of animals that lived at high elevations or latitudes.
By the way, a feathered half-wing has some obvious practical uses. A wing that is far too small to let the owner fly or glide can still be used acrobatically to alter the trajectory of a leap. This could have been very useful for a small predatory dinosaur in catching agile prey or avoiding attacks from larger animals; and this could have been an evolutionary path that led to the birds.
- Jordan
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Re: Fluffy Dinosaurs
Mon, July 24, 2006 - 1:50 AMso do you think trex had feather pubes and pits? that would be a gas.
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Re: Fluffy Dinosaurs
Thu, July 27, 2006 - 4:53 PMSo, Jordan, do you think that the feathering may have been present in all dinosaur lines, or just a few (like the dromaeosaurs). -
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Re: Fluffy Dinosaurs
Thu, July 27, 2006 - 10:51 PMI don't know. I'd guess that if it was limited it might have been limited to the Saurischians, and maybe to the bipedal carnivorous families within that order. I will point out that larger dinosaurs probably didn't need much in the way of feathers anyway, because their own bulk would have insulated them quite nicely in most Mesozoic conditions (climates were warmer and more equable most of the time).
- Jordan -
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Re: Fluffy Dinosaurs
Fri, July 28, 2006 - 9:24 AMdoesnt this information kind of upset the whole meaning of the word dinosaur? maybe the saurischians and the ornithischians were not really related.......
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