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Oldest T. Rex Relative Unveiled

Posted by Zonk on from the bet-you'll-never-look-at-chickens-the-same-way-again dept.

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."

4 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Brightly coloured? by themysteryman73 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Considering it's a fossil, I'd say they look at the bones...

  2. Re:Brightly coloured? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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. Both birds and carnivorous dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurs belong to the evolutionary family known as the theropods.

    The crest of G. wucaii probably functioned as a signal, either to attract potential mates or for species recognition.

    So I presume that the idea that the crest had color comes from its links with todays birds.
  3. Re:Compete to find the oldest by Copid · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Dinosaur skeletons can be classified as bird-hipped or lizard hipped. We also have exmaples of bird-hipped and bird footed. Why then do the 'experts' claim without a hint of sarcasm that birds evolved from the lizard-hipped variety (like t-rex)?
    You might find this useful.

    Also, if these remains show a feathered crest, and are so much OLDER than the dinosaurs which LATER evolved into birds, then does that mean I can be born before my grandparents?
    Perhaps it just means that feathered dinosaurs existed earlier than was originally thought? You seem to think that all dinosaurs must have been feathered or all dinosaurs must have been unfethered--always. There's no reason to beleive that other than the simplistic assumption that there is some sort of linear progression from unfeathered to feathered to birds.

    Has anyone else heard of circular reasoning? It goes like this: "The fossils are very old because they were found in very old rocks. We know the rocks are very old because they had fossils in them!"
    Of course, no geologist has ever thought about that. You've destroyed the entire theory of evolution by pointing out that the geologists have polluted their science simply to cover for the biologists. Have you really thought about this? Not all strata are dated with index fossils. There are other methods and, not surprisingly, their results AGREE with each other. Also, deciding whether something is older than something else can be done using the relatively simple assumption that stuff at the bottom is older than stuff at the top. The relative ages of the strata were worked out well before the theory of evolution even came to be. There is no conspiracy.

    It's about time science made the theory fit the evidence, instead of trying to force the evidence in the theory. Science was SUPPOSED to be about finding a theory which could explain the observable facts. Too often now it's about making sure that only observations which are interpreted according to the most popular theory are allowed to be published.
    So what's your interpretation of it all? It looks to me like there was a time when dinosaurs existed but there were no birds. Now we have birds but no dinosaurs. Where did the birds come from? Are we just wrong, and did the birds and dinosaurs coexist? Please point to some evidence either way, or you're just another armchair scientist who hasn't looked at a fraction of a percent of what's actually out there.

    Questioning a theory is apparently forbidden by those who point the finger at religion for being fanatical.
    It's an interesting coincidence that most of the people who question evolution and the age of the earth have a religious bone to pick. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's also clear that most people who post nonsense like the "circular reasoning" argument for geological dating also don't know their asses from holes in the ground. It's pretty easy to put 2 and 2 together and realize that most of their positions are not based on the evidence.
    --
    An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
  4. Re:I'm happy to undermine TWO centuries... by plunge · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You are acting like there is some sort of binary: either they know for certain, or its just a guess. This is nonsense. Some things are known to a very high degree of certainty, because multiple lines of evidence all converge. Sometimes things are less well supported... and people generally say so.