Dressed to kill: A feathered tyrannosaur is discovered in China

Christian Science Monitor ^ | 4-4-2012 | Pete Spotts

[Renfield]

It's not often you see a dinosaur with a girth and toothy grimace reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus rex yet covered in a downy winter coat worthy of L.L. Bean.

But that's what a team of paleontologists in China reports. They've dubbed their find Yutyrannus huali (beautiful feathered tyrant), a creature that stretched 30 feet from tail-tip to snout and weighed 1.5 tons.

It's the largest dinosaur yet to host feather-like features all over its body – features well preserved on three nearly complete, mostly intact fossil skeletons the team found....

[Renfield]

Yutyrannus huali and other smaller dinosaurs are depicted roaming 125 million years ago, in this artist's rendering provided by the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

[Renfield]

Ping. I found a source I could post, ignore the freepmail about this one.

[the invisib1e hand]

Cross-dressing a natural phenomenon?

[the invisib1e hand]

shake dat tail feather, b1tch!

[6SJ7]

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the 1.5 ton monsters not only were covered with feathers, but made chirping sounds instead of roaring as depicted in Jurassic Park. Imagine a 1.5 ton canary. CHIRP! CHIRP!

[TheLawyerFormerlyKnownAsAl]

Yesterday a mammoth and today a dinosaur. Things are really happening in China.

Or are they?

[Thorliveshere]

[pieceofthepuzzle]

I’ll wait for corroboration of this find.

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

Looks like a scene from “Terra Nova.”

[thackney]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/04/04/technology-feathered-tyrannosaur.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-giant-feathered-dinosaur-20120405,0,5455707.story

https://news.google.com/news/story?q=feathered+tyrannosaur&hl=en&prmd=imvnsu&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=825&bih=465&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dFmKR-d6x7ZS0vMpu8-01VfmPlVmM&ei=4qF9T9HRJYOe8QTrjNmGDQ&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQqgIwAA

[pieceofthepuzzle]

Thanks. I don’t dispute the find, and do buy into the idea that modern birds may have descended from a dinosaur lineage, but I’ve become very cynical when it comes to ‘hot’ research finds from a single group. I haven’t seen the Nature paper, but the LA times article quotes one of the researchers saying: “These plumes weren’t used for flight; they were filamentary and lacked a complex structure, giving the dinosaurs who wore them more of a fuzzy appearance.” That’s pretty impressive in and of itself - that large dinosaurs would have a ‘coat’.

[Blogatron]

Brave Sir Robin and the Chicken of Bristol

This is a true and accurate account of the deeds of Sir Robin, and his brave encounter with the malevolent Chicken of Bristol, against whom he nearly stood up.

[thackney]

Under the google link is one from Natural Geographic that discusses other feathered finds in the same area.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Renfield. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

-additional-

Warm and fuzzy T. rex? New evidence surprises
Xfinity | 04/04/2012 | Alicia Chang
Posted on 04/04/2012 12:03:18 PM PDT by SatinDoll
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2868134/posts