All Dinosaurs may have had feathers.

[MorphingDragon]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...e_had_feathers

Early dinosaurs probably looked a lot more like Big Bird than scientists once suspected. A newly discovered, nearly complete fossilized skeleton hints that all dinosaurs may have sported feathers.

“It suggests that the ancestor of all dinosaurs might have been a feathered animal,” says study author Mark Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Researchers have found feathered dinosaurs before, but this one is more distantly related to birds than any previously discovered. Called Sciurumimus albersdoerferi, it belongs to a group of massive dinosaurs called megalosaurs that had sharp teeth, claws and a heavy-duty frame. The specimen — a youngster that lived about 150 million years ago — is only 70 centimeters long, but it could have grown up to 10 meters, about the length of a school bus.

The fossil’s feathers aren’t the only things getting paleontologists all aflutter. The skeleton’s condition is exciting, too.

“It’s a gorgeous specimen,” says Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. “Probably one of the best meat-eating dinosaurs ever preserved.”

The skeleton rests in a bed of limestone, back arched, mouth gaping, tail curled behind its head. Its bones are unbroken and still carry remnants of flesh, scientists report online July 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “There aren’t many more things you can ask of a fossil,” Chiappe says.

Bits of smooth, scaleless skin anchor long, fine feathers to the tail. Unlike modern feathers, these “protofeathers” or “type 1 feathers” look like simple strands of hair. The thin, flexible feathers are ancient versions of the broad, branching plumage —“type 2 feathers” — that adorn modern birds. Though the feathers look different, both are made from the same basic ingredients.

In life, the hairlike feathers would have given the dinosaur a thick coat and a bushy tail. (Part of the dinosaur’s name, Sciurumimus, derives from the Greek for “squirrel mimic.”) “It looks like it was a pretty fluffy kind of thing,” Norell says. “Kind of like a baby chick.”

Eventually, the study’s authors hope to figure out the color of the dinosaur’s feathers. But because color tests require fossil snippets, scientists would have to clip bits from the dinosaur’s remains. And since this specimen is one of a kind, researchers aren’t quite ready to disturb it.

So far, nearly all of the feathered dinosaurs ever discovered have come from eastern Asia. But excavators unearthed this fossil in southern Germany. Even in places collectors picked over for 150 years, Norell says, new things keep turning up. “There’s always more out there,” he says.

[Fazzy]

All of a sudden, the dance moves that go with the song "everybody walk the dinosaur" take on a whole new meaning.

[jeremy h]

I think there's a lot more to be found out about this... I've never really understood how dinosaurs went extinct everywhere (regardless of size) and other creatures survived. Now, I know it's contentious but the idea that birds are little dinosaurs has a certain logic?

[lannisters4life]

Originally Posted by jeremy h

I think there's a lot more to be found out about this... I've never really understood how dinosaurs went extinct everywhere (regardless of size) and other creatures survived. Now, I know it's contentious but the idea that birds are little dinosaurs has a certain logic?

They're definitely mini dinos. All you need to do is look at them.

[jeremy h]

Originally Posted by lannisters4life

They're definitely mini dinos. All you need to do is look at them.

I agree. I've got quite a few fossils - one of them is a very small reptile (Triassic), and if you saw the original bones lying on the ground you'd swear it was a bird.

[notjustjay]

I was watching the Jurassic Park movies again recently and remember reading on IMDB that they changed the design of the raptors between the second and third movies to reflect new research that suggested they had feathers.

[Mousse]

Originally Posted by jeremy h

I think there's a lot more to be found out about this... I've never really understood how dinosaurs went extinct everywhere (regardless of size) and other creatures survived. Now, I know it's contentious but the idea that birds are little dinosaurs has a certain logic?

I've been of the opinion that birds were descended from dinosaurs for decades (back when I first saw the famous fossil of the Archaeopteryx). Big dinos dying out makes sense, since their energy requirement would have been enormous. Smaller dinos (those I believed evolved in to birds) should have been able to scrap enough resources together to survive.
A catastrophic event that wiped out the ALL the dinosaurs, but left mammals and insects alive? Makes no sense to me. The only way I can see that being true if someone targeted the dinosaurs for extinction and hunted them down to the smallest specimen after hurtling a meteor at the Earth.

[jeremy h]

Did anyone here read 2000AD as a kid? (Don't know if it sold anywhere other than here in the UK?) There was a great strip in which hunters from the future went back to hunt and farm dinosaurs for meat... That extinction explanation made more sense to me as a 12 year old than ideas of mammals eating their eggs that was doing the rounds in the 70's.

If they had feathers they probably tasted like turkey in my book...

[chrono1081]

I remember hearing this around 1995 shortly after Jurassic Park came out (in 1993) and it made me sad so I like to pretend all dinosaurs look the way they do in Jurassic Park :P

[whooleytoo]

Somehow, a big fluffy Tyrannosaurus Rex just doesn't have the same 'bite' does it?

(And yes, I did have to look up how to spell it).

[Tomorrow]

This makes no sense. When I play Carnivores, they don't have feathers.

[Jaffa Cake]

Originally Posted by jeremy h

Did anyone here read 2000AD as a kid? (Don't know if it sold anywhere other than here in the UK?) There was a great strip in which hunters from the future went back to hunt and farm dinosaurs for meat...

I remember that – the strip in question was called Flesh.

[Scepticalscribe]

Originally Posted by MorphingDragon

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...e_had_feathers

Great idea for a thread, and thanks for posting this fascinating piece of information.

Originally Posted by jeremy h

I agree. I've got quite a few fossils - one of them is a very small reptile (Triassic), and if you saw the original bones lying on the ground you'd swear it was a bird.

Yes, that theory has been around for a while and it seems to make a lot of sense.

Originally Posted by jeremy h

Did anyone here read 2000AD as a kid? (Don't know if it sold anywhere other than here in the UK?) There was a great strip in which hunters from the future went back to hunt and farm dinosaurs for meat... That extinction explanation made more sense to me as a 12 year old than ideas of mammals eating their eggs that was doing the rounds in the 70's.

Yes, I remember 2000AD - a great comic book. Used to read it regularly......even when my kid brother used to buy it.

Originally Posted by whooleytoo

Somehow, a big fluffy Tyrannosaurus Rex just doesn't have the same 'bite' does it?

(And yes, I did have to look up how to spell it).

Lol - I hear you, and must admit that you have a point.

[voyagerd]

Yay! Feathers!

[Jaffa Cake]

Originally Posted by whooleytoo

Somehow, a big fluffy Tyrannosaurus Rex just doesn't have the same 'bite' does it?

Perhaps not, but if one was chasing you I'm sure you wouldn't be thinking how fluffy it looked.

[Abstract]

Originally Posted by voyagerd

Yay! Feathers!

Yay! Strip!

[AhmedFaisal]

Originally Posted by MorphingDragon

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...e_had_feathers

Sorry but this is a bit incorrect. It adds to the thought that all the Theropods, a subclass of dinosaurs from which birds ultimately evolved, had feathers, it doesn't prove that all dinosaurs, i.e. also the other big subgroup of dinosaurs the Ornithischia (Ankylosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus) had feathers. In fact it doesn't even prove that all Saurischia to which the Theropods belong had feathers, the Sauropodomorpha (Diplodocus, Bronto/Apatosaurus) the other big subgroup of Saurischia, at this point is not thought to have had feathers but an Iguana like skin appearance.

[MorphingDragon]

Originally Posted by AhmedFaisal

Sorry but this is a bit incorrect. It adds to the thought that all the Theropods, a subclass of dinosaurs from which birds ultimately evolved, had feathers, it doesn't prove that all dinosaurs, i.e. also the other big subgroup of dinosaurs the Ornithischia (Ankylosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus) had feathers. In fact it doesn't even prove that all Saurischia to which the Theropods belong had feathers, the Sauropodomorpha (Diplodocus, Bronto/Apatosaurus) the other big subgroup of Saurischia, at this point is not thought to have had feathers but an Iguana like skin appearance.

Well then tell News Science, I'm not a paleontologist or a biologist.

[AhmedFaisal]

Originally Posted by MorphingDragon

Well then tell News Science, I'm not a paleontologist.

Someone already did in the comments section. Otherwise I would have. Half educated journalists, as usual......

[APlotdevice]

Originally Posted by jeremy h

I think there's a lot more to be found out about this... I've never really understood how dinosaurs went extinct everywhere (regardless of size) and other creatures survived. Now, I know it's contentious but the idea that birds are little dinosaurs has a certain logic?

Or not so little dinosaurs in some cases....

[Sackvillenb]

Originally Posted by jeremy h

I've never really understood how dinosaurs went extinct everywhere (regardless of size) and other creatures survived.

Well, that's the thing. They didn't go extinct everywhere regardless of size. The smaller bird-like dinosaurs DID survive... and evolved into birds! And if that seems a bit oddly specific, it's partly due to their size and some other adaptations, but also do to their majorly useful adaptation for flight. The only dinosaurs that survived were the ones that became birds.

[Hastings101]

Originally Posted by APlotdevice

Or not so little dinosaurs in some cases....
Image

That would be scary in reality but in picture form it's just so funny. Like having an enormous chicken hunt you down lol.

[iJohnHenry]

Originally Posted by Hastings101

That would be scary in reality but in picture form it's just so funny. Like having an enormous chicken hunt you down lol.

We were smarter then.

Well, at least the ones that survived to reproduce.

What happened to that laudable system, anyway??

[The-Pro]

Very interesting thanks for posting that

[impulse462]

It's pretty interesting.

If you look at the fossil/structure of the foot of a T-rex and compare it to modern day birds, they are eerily similar as well.

My biology prof in college thought he was the reincarnation of Charles Darwin, and he hammered the fact that birds and dinosaurs probably shared a common ancestor that neither of them shared with crocodiles, which is probably why birds and dinosaurs are similar, structure wise. I havent read any data relating to the DNA or proteins comparing dinosaurs or birds, but they probably have some similarities as well.

It probably took thousands of different species to get differentiation between the two, but the fact they share some key similarities is what makes it so interesting in my opinion.