Comments on: Was Tyrannosaurus a Big Turkey?

By: Marc Vincent

Marc Vincent — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:14:05 +0000

@Dan – That may be the case for Tyrannosaurus, but given that it was a dromaeosaur it seems far more likely that Utahraptor (which was also much smaller than Tyrannosaurus) did have feathers than didn’t.

By: Matt Martyniuk

Matt Martyniuk — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:23:55 +0000

@ Dan Peterson:
That’s a logical fallacy, specifically argument from ignorance. Just because we have not found large feathers (ostrich sized? Emu sized?) in the fossil record does not mean large animals lacked feathers. Furthermore there is no reason to suspect that large animals necessarily had large feathers. Your argument also assumes incorrectly that feathers are for insulation, when they are as much or more so for display in many taxa. You also ignore the fact that insulation doesn’t mean staying warm, it means regulation of body temperature–feathers would have been just as useful for keeping a large animal cool in the direct heat of the sun as for helping it retain warmth in the cold. Recent studies indicating that tyrannosaurs were endothermic heterotherms would have made this strategy even more advantageous.

By: Tom Parker

Tom Parker — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 07:59:26 +0000

I laughed out loud at that last comment (by Dan Peterson). What a horrible hypothesis. To address said post directly: the China and Bavaria sites were (in the Mesozoic) a deep forest and an island chain respectively. Not ideal places for a large theropod to live and the lack of large theropod fossils in general in these areas are so rare (non existent?). So why on earth would we have a large feather ever preserve in these places when even the bones don’t do so (or the large theropods weren’t ever there at all).

On a more general scale, Brian already explained it in the post: ” Circumstances of fine preservation are required to detect feathers, and even then, sometimes only patches are preserved. The types of environments Tyrannosaurus lived in were not exactly amenable to the kind of rapid, fine-detail preservation required to detect feathers. Even in cases where skin patches are preserved, it is difficult to know whether there might have been protofeathers on other parts of the body, or whether some of those feathers fell off or otherwise eluded preservation. Delicate structures require delicate preservation to detect.”

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Excellent post Brian, anyhow. Sorry to sour things.

By: Babbletrish

Babbletrish — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:55:51 +0000

Whenever this subject comes up, it gives me an awful reminder of just how little most people understand feathers. And birds. And dinosaurs. (Ugh, that Cracked article. [Not to mention Cracked in general but that's not important right now.])

I’d love to live in a world where people are aware that the Wild Turkey and the headless, footless mutant thing sitting on the table with stuffing crammed up its wrong end are just a little tiny bit different from each-other. Alas…

By: Dan Peterson

Dan Peterson — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:48:27 +0000

Good points, Brian, but when one considers that millions of square meters of dinosaur fossil-bearing rock have now been examined (from places like China and Bavaria where feathers are often preserved), yet these places have NEVER yielded a single proportianately ‘larger’ feather that would indicate any larger dinosaurs possessed them. The evidence to date seems to indicate that only small dinosaurs probably had feathers. And this does set well with the fact smaller creatures require more insulation than larger ones. Surely one larger, “feathered” dinosaur would have lost just one proportionately larger feather in all of the time and area represented by those fossil beds that have been so carefully scrutinized.

The lack of evidence suggests only very small dinosaurs that needed to insulate their bodies, had feathers to insulate their bodies. Adult Utahraptors, Tyrannosaurs, and other larger animals that unquestionably had smaller, feather-covered ancestors may be completely correct with scale covered, featherless bodies.

By: Zhen

Zhen — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:36:51 +0000

That doesn’t sound very scary. More like a 46 foot 9 ton turkey.

By: Marc Vincent

Marc Vincent — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:19:37 +0000

Peter Schouten is an incredible artist, but his T. rex hurts my eyes. Not because of the feathers, but because of the giant arms and weird skull…

By: Nick Gardner

Nick Gardner — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:18:36 +0000

Hi Brian,

I briefly covered this same topic in a short letter to American Biology Teacher a few years back: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1662/0002-7685%282008%2970%5B392b:NDEFFI%5D2.0.CO;2

Subsequent comment/reply here can be found here:

http://whyihatetheropods.blogspot.com/2008/09/did-tyrannosaurus-rex-have-feathers.html

Cheers,

Nick