[wordup] Dinosaurs may have been a fluffy lot

[Adam Shand]

From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1764136,00.html

Dinosaurs may have been a fluffy lot
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
September 04, 2005

THE popular image of Tyrannosaurus rex and other killer dinosaurs may 
have to be changed as a scientific consensus emerges that many were 
covered with feathers.

Most predatory dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurs and velociraptors have 
usually been depicted in museums, films and books as covered in a thick 
hide of dull brown or green skin. The impression was of a killer 
stripped of adornment in the name of hunting efficiency.

This week, however, a leading expert on dinosaur evolution will tell 
the British Association, the principal conference of British 
scientists, that this image is wrong.

Gareth Dyke, a palaeontologist of University College Dublin, will tell 
the BA Festival of Science being held in the city that most such 
creatures were coated with delicate feathery plumage that could even 
have been multi-coloured. Fossil evidence that such dinosaurs were 
feathered is now “irrefutable”.

“The way these creatures are depicted can no longer be considered 
scientifically accurate,” he said. “All the evidence is that they 
looked more like birds than reptiles. Tyrannosaurs might have resembled 
giant chicks.”

The latest visualisation suggests that parts of Walking with Dinosaurs, 
the acclaimed BBC series, cannot be seen as scientifically valid. 
Similar criticisms might also be levelled at the Hollywood blockbuster 
Jurassic Park.

The Natural History Museum in London, which has a popular exhibition of 
robot dinosaurs, conceded this weekend that some of its permanent 
displays may have to be adapted to reflect the new findings.

The feather revelation follows a series of discoveries in fossil beds 
at Liaoning in northeast China where a volcanic eruption buried many 
dinosaurs alive. It also cut off the oxygen that would otherwise have 
rotted them away.

Some theropod (“beast-footed”) dinosaurs were preserved complete with 
feathery plumage. Theropod is the name given to predatory creatures 
that walked upright on two legs, balanced by a long tail.

The feathered finds include an early tyrannosaur, a likely ancestor of 
Tyrannosaurus rex, two small flying dinosaurs and five other predators. 
Feathers are thought to have evolved first to keep dinosaurs warm and 
only later as an aid to flight.

Such finds are significant in linking dinosaurs to modern birds. Most 
palaeontologists accept that birds are descended from dinosaurs but 
there is fierce debate over how this happened. At the Dublin 
conference, Dyke will present new evidence suggesting that dinosaurs 
evolved the ability to fly and that some even developed all four limbs 
into wings.