Oldest T. Rex Relative Unveiled

Dr Occult writes "A group of researchers have found the forefather of T. Rex in Xinjiang province in northwestern China. It lived around 160 million years ago. This makes it more than twice as old as T. Rex, and the most primitive known member of the family. The researchers were surprised to learn the 3m long dinosaur sported a spectacular feathered crest on its head which may have been brightly coloured."

Comments

Re:Brightly coloured?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they know about the structure of the crest from the fossil imprint. They don't know if it was multi-coloured, or what colour it was at all; however, because it shares similar features to that of the nasal crests of modern birds, which use brightly coloured crests as mating displays, they guess that this may have had a similar function.

Re:Brightly coloured?

[archgoon]

From the article: The presence of a nasal crest is particularly interesting, says Norell, because it is so similar to the head ornaments carried by many of today's birds. So, by the sound of it, we've seen other animals that have this bone structure, and they have feathers there (and sounds like it doesn't do anything except have feathers there). As for brightly colored, I don't know where that came from. It's not mentioned in the article, perhaps the submitter read about this somewhere else.

What Real Scientists Think

[ChaoticCoyote]

Science is a process of debate and analysis, and there have been a couple of interesting threads among paleontologists regarding interpretation of the Guanlong fossil:

Thread 1
Thread 2

Much as I like the artist's depiction of Guanlong, he did take some creative liberties that obscure the underlying science. Ignoring the art and focusing on the article itself, the major item of interest in the crest. Many Jurassic carnosaurs had crests; why this feature evolved, and why it "went away" later is being debated.

Not in TFA

[KwKSilver]

Just went back & reread TFA. It says nothing about feathers for this beastie. The "colored" part comes from the fact that the rock stratum/strata it was found in was brightly colored. In short, the submitter seems to have mis-summarized or misread TFA or intended to post another one, perhaps about Bette Middler or Cher.