Dinosaurs may have been a fluffy lot ~~ now they tell us....

The Sunday Times ^ | September 04, 2005 | Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

[Buggman]

So does this mean that Big Bird is really a velociraptor? That might explain all those rumors of kids disappearing on the Sesame Street set . . .

[Clemenza]

More Godzookie than Godzilla?

[Physicist]

[RightWhale]

Tyrannosaurs might have resembled giant chicks

It's one thing to have a flock of 50 chickadees in your yard, but this group would tear up the hedges even worse than moose do.

[VadeRetro]

I have never seen a tyrannosaurus that looked like a giant chick. I have seen some big chicks that looked like dinosaurs, but that's another topic.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Implicit in this is that they were warm-blooded.

Why else have feathers?

[RightWingAtheist]

The paleoartist Gregory Paul has always insisted on drawing most of his theropods, with the exception of some of the larger carnosaurs, as being feathered. His marvelous book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World was somewhat controversial in this regard when it was published nearly twenty years ago, but instead, it now seems that Paul was ahead of the field in guessing what these magnificient creatures really looked like.

[RightWingAtheist]

I have seen some big chicks that looked like dinosaurs, but that's another topic.

Dammit VR, I was hoping to finally get a thread without a single Helen Thomas reference! :)

[RightWingAtheist]

Longisquama. In all likelihood, the feathers/scale/whatever were used for mating display than flight or thermal insulation:

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Is that for real!

[RightWingAtheist]

It's a sketch which is based on the first fossilized skeleton found of Longisquama. I don't know if the general consensus as to what the creature looked like has change in the thirty-five years since, but it hasn't changed much if Google Image Search is any indication.

[Dustbunny]

Wow, another arrogant theory debunked.

[escapefromboston]

Lame.
When I was a kid I used to have plenty of books about Dinosaurs because I thought they were cool. Now that they look like chickens I doubt I would have been particularly interested.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I may have to keep this news from my youngest grandson.

[Renfield]

Dude! Where can I get a suit like that?? It's just what I need to wear to church, and at appeals to the Property Value Administrator.

[Renfield]

Of course they (at least, the "bird-hipped" dinosaurs) were warm blooded. That issue is pretty well settled.

Feathers make good insulation.

[RightWingAtheist]

Actually, theropods are saurischians, or "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs. The ornithischians ("bird-hipped" dinosaurs) included the hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, stegosaurs and ankylosaurs, among others, but they were all herbivorous and are not among the candidates for being ancestors of present-day birds.

[ForGod'sSake]

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