New Feathered Dinosaurs found

M

mwerner

Joined
Apr 23, 2002
Messages
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There have been a number of joint expeditions ongoing in China for some years now, and we have gotten little blurbs about marvelous new discoveries.

Here's a nice article just put up today on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8273938.stm

These "feathered dinosaur" fossils pre-date the famous archeopteryx fossil by some 10 million years, and one is a four-legged form clearly showing that feathers evolved considerably prior to the ability to fly.
 
jill jackson said:
A lot of scientists believe that dinosaurs were warm blooded and birds evolved out of them.
Click to expand...
There is uncertainty about the degree of warm-bloodedness but the link to birds, especially with these latest finds, is pretty definite now.

It's sobering to think that the dinosaur group of animals lived on Earth for far longer (150 million years) than they have been extinct (65 million years).

Andy
 
Feathers are insulation. Dinosaurs lived in a wide range of environments. A large dinosaur would be protected from cold to some extent by its body mass, just as large mammals like elephants need to shed heat through their large ears and by bathing frequently. But smaller dinosaurs could benefit from feathers keeping heat in, and fluffing them to shed excess heat.

Those small dinosaurs that climbed trees and leaped around in them could have used feathers to help them glide, and from that, they became airborne. A good guess on which dinosaurs may to have given rise to the birds seem to be the theropods ... smaller relatives of T. rex.
 
Speaking of T-Rex....Last week, Science Friday had a show on the recent discovery of a "mini" T-Rex. Cute little guy...Only 9 feet tall. Predates the big version we're all familiar with by about 30 millon years.
What's interesting is that it was always thought that the T-Rex "body plan" evolved as this species grew larger. That is, the arms shrunk, the legs lengthened, etc.

However, this smaller, earlier critter had exactly the same body style, leading paleontologists to think now that the successful smaller version just "scaled up" over millions of years, with increased bone mass to handle the weight.
 
mwerner said:
What's interesting is that it was always thought that the T-Rex "body plan" evolved as this species grew larger. That is, the arms shrunk, the legs lengthened, etc.

However, this smaller, earlier critter had exactly the same body style, leading paleontologists to think now that the successful smaller version just "scaled up" over millions of years, with increased bone mass to handle the weight.
Click to expand...

That's what we get for speculating ahead of our data. :D
Need .. more .. fossils.
 
They didn't "die out."

They were an advanced society that used bio - organic technology.

They wiped themselves out in a really savage planetwide civil war.

The survivors left, and will be returning to reclaim the planet in 2012.
 
Won't they be surprised at what those cute fuzzy little scavengers they left behind have turned into.
 
Recently, scientists discovered that the tyrannosaurus was often infested with parasites in it's throat and jaws, which caused it to starve.

BTW, I try to think of dinosaurs when I'm eating chicken or eggs. LOL :D
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Feathers are insulation. Dinosaurs lived in a wide range of environments. A large dinosaur would be protected from cold to some extent by its body mass, just as large mammals like elephants need to shed heat through their large ears and by bathing frequently. But smaller dinosaurs could benefit from feathers keeping heat in, and fluffing them to shed excess heat.

Those small dinosaurs that climbed trees and leaped around in them could have used feathers to help them glide, and from that, they became airborne. A good guess on which dinosaurs may to have given rise to the birds seem to be the theropods ... smaller relatives of T. rex.
Click to expand...

They still need to work out the lizard hips or bird hips part of the equation. The fossils coming out of China need to be scrutinized. Xu Xang was even fooled regarding a reconstructed bird/dinosaur. Archeoraptor was proven to be 2 different species brought together as one.
 
Something I've often wondered about:

How "intelligent" were dinosaurs?

IF modern birds are descended from the big guys it raises intriguing possibilities I think. Many, if not most, birds are very clever, some even using tools to achieve their food gathering activities. Parrots in particular display some quire remarkable abilities.

Were dinosaurs intelligent creatures or did birds evolve their abilities as they became what we see as modern birds?
 
Great point Gaj,
Brain cavities of birds are comparitively much larger than brain cavities of reptiles.
 
According to Jurassic Park ... :D

Some dinosaurs were pack hunters. This could have fostered something like a wolf's intelligence. But not only are fossils themselves comparatively rare, behavior rarely fossilizes.
 
Some of my best behavior was fossilized a couple of decades ago.:D
 
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