Tyrannosaurus Rex Relative Had Feathers

smooth wombat writes "The earliest known relative of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex had primitive feathers, probably to help it keep warm. The primitive feathers were found on the remains of a dinosaur called Dilong paradoxus, which was about 1.5 meters (yards) long. It is the first member of the T. rex family with the characteristic. The fossil was found in western China in an area rich in fossil remains."

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More info...

[jangobongo]

Nature.com states that the feathers are actually protofeathers which are more like hair. Instead of having a central shaft and barbs, they are single flexible filaments that would have covered the dinosaur's body.

Another interesting note from the article: The first Jurassic Park film featured scaly reptiles, but in the upcoming film Jurassic Park IV all the dinosaurs now will have feathers.

Not so strange...

[jpkunst]

Since birds are descendants of dinosaurs. See here, for example.

JP

Re:Not so strange...

[jc42]

Nope; not strange at all. Of course, it would be more accurate to say that birds (Aves) are a clade of the Dinosauria, but that would probably be a bit picky for /.'s style.

While the evidence that firmly established this was only found in the past couple decades, it's perhaps worth noting that it's not at all a new idea. It was suggested by Charles Darwin, among others, that those fossilized bones of huge creatures that were being found in the early 1800's were remarkably similar to bird skeletons. Then, when the Archaeopterix fossils were found (in the Fraunhofer limestone formation in Germany), the connection was even more likely.

But that wasn't really much evidence, and the idea was kicked around without much more information until the 1970's when a small gang of paleontologists led by John Ostrom started talking it up again. He pointed out that there were a number of other small dinosaurs, classified as Theropoda, that had been found, and they were remarkably similar to Archaeopterix, though they had arms rather than wings. Ostrom also pointed out that, although Archaeopterix was primitive in many respects (teeth, bony tail, denser bones than modern birds), it had fully modern feathers. He suggested that feathers were developed for insulation long before they were used for flight, and we should expect to find that many small dinosaurs had feathers.

It didn't take long after that for small, feathered dinosaur fossils to turn up. The critical event was the opening up of China to academic and scientific work again after the decades of Mao's rule. There are formations in northwest China of fine-grained silt and limestone, 100-150 million years old, that preserve fine details of fossils. There are fossils of a number of early birds there, and also of other small non-flying dinosaurs. Many of the latter show feathers of various sorts.

So, 150 years after Darwin suggested it, the conventional cladogram now has the birds as an offshoot of the theropod dinosaurs, and feathers are considered a primitive characteristic of an unknown portion of the dinosaurs. Mainly the smaller ones, of course, since the biggiest wouldn't have needed the insulation. Even the big ones may have had feathered crests, and their babies may have had feathers until they grew out of them.

Due to my wife's allergies to cats and dogs, we share our house with four birds. We like to refer to them as our pet dinosaurs. Some people know what we're talking about. For the rest, we can say something like "Oh, didn't you hear? The dinosaurs weren't wiped out after all. Some of them survived; they're called 'birds'."

And the cockatiels are moulting now, dropping feathers all over the place. The feathers mostly go into the compost. They sure don't fossilize very well.