A restoration of Nyasasaurus in its Middle Triassic habitat, based on the known bones and comparisons to closely related forms. The description of Nyasasaurus was one of the year’s most important dinosaur stories. Art by Mark Witton.

There’s always something new to learn about dinosaurs. Whether it’s the description of a previously-unknown species or a twist in what we thought we knew about their lives, our understanding of the evolution, biology, and extinction is shifting on a near-daily basis. Even now, paleontologists are pushing new dinosaurs to publication and debating the natural history of these wonderful animals, but the end of the year is as good a time as any to take a brief look back at what we learned in 2012.

For one thing, there was an exceptional amount of dino-hype this year. A retracted paper that mused on the nature of hypothetical space dinosaurs, a credulous report on an amateur scientist who said he had evidence that all dinosaurs were aquatic, and overblown nonsense about dinosaurs farting themselves into extinction all hit the headlines. (And the less said about the Ancient Aliens dinosaur episode, the better.) Dinosaurs are amazing enough without such sensationalist dreck, or, for that matter, being transformed into abominable human-raptor hybrids by Hollywood.

Not all the dinosaurs to wander into the media spotlight were atrocious, though. The glossy book Dinosaur Art collected some of the best prehistoric illustrations ever created, and the recently-released All Yesterdays presented dinosaurs in unfamiliar scenes as a way to push artists to break from severely-constrained traditions. Dinosaurs were probably much more unusual than we have ever imagined.

Indeed, new discoveries this year extended the range of fluff and feathers among dinosaurs and raised the question of whether “enfluffledness” was an ancient, common dinosaur trait. Paleontologists confirmed that the ostrich-like Ornithomimus–long suspected to have plumage–sported different arrangements of feathers as it aged. New insight on the 30-foot-long carnivore Yutyrannus affirmed that even big tyrannosaurs were covered in dinofuzz. And while both Ornithomimus and Yutyrannus belonged to the feathery subset of the dinosaur family tree that includes birds, the discovery of fluff on a much more distantly related theropod–Sciurumimus–hints that feathers were a much older, more widespread dinosaur feature than previously expected. Paired with previous finds, Sciurumimus suggests that protofeathers either evolved multiple times in dinosaurian history, or that the simple structures are a common inheritance at the base of the dinosaur family tree that was later lost in some groups and modified in others.

While some traditionalists might prefer scaly dinosaurs over fuzzy ones, feathers and their antecedents are important clues that can help paleontologists explore other aspects of paleobiology. This year, for example, researchers reconstructed dark, iridescent plumage on Microraptor on the basis of fossil feathers, and, as display structures, feathery decorations will undoubtedly have a role to play in the ongoing debate about how sexual selection influenced dinosaur forms.  Feathers can also be frustrating–a new look at the plumage of Anchiornis and Archaeopteryx will undoubtedly alter our expectations of how aerially capable these bird-like dinosaurs were and how they might have escaped predatory dinosaurs that dined on the prehistoric fowl. Such lines of inquiry are where the past and present meet–after all, birds are modern dinosaurs.

Feathers aren’t the only dinosaur body coverings we know about. Skin impressions, such as those found with the ankylosaur Tarchia, have also helped paleontologists discern what dinosaurs actually looked like. Pebbly patterns in Saurolophus skin can even be used to differentiate species, although paleontologists are still puzzled as to why hadrosaurs seem to be found with fossil skin traces more often than other varieties of dinosaur.

And, speaking of ornamentation, a damaged Pachycephalosaurus skull dome might provide evidence that these dinosaurs really did butt heads. How the adornments of such dinosaurs changed as they aged, though, is still a point of controversy. One of this year’s papers threw support to the idea that Torosaurus really is a distinct dinosaur, rather than a mature Triceratops, but that debate is far from over.

Other studies provided new insights into how some dinosaurs slept, the evolutionary pattern of dinosaur succession, what dinosaur diversity was like at the end of the Cretaceous, and how dinosaurs grew up, but, of course, how dinosaurs fed is a favorite place that lies at the intersection of science and imagination. A poster at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting deconstructed how Tyrannosaurus rex–suggested to have the most powerful bite of any terrestrial animal ever–tore the heads off of deceased Triceratops. The herbivorous Diplodocus, by contrast, munched soft plants and stripped branches of vegetation rather than gnawing on tree bark, and the tiny, omnivorous Fruitadens probably mixed insects with its Jurassic salads. Studying dinosaur leftovers also explained why paleontologists didn’t find more of the mysterious Deinocheirus, which thus far has been identified by only one incomplete fossil–the long-armed ornithomimosaur was eaten by a Tarbosaurus.

We also met a slew of new dinosaurs this year, including the many-horned Xenoceratops, the archaic coelurosaur Bicentenaria, the sail-backed Ichthyovenator, the stubby-armed Eoabelisaurus, and the early tyrannosaur Juratyrant. This is just a short list of species I wrote about–a few that add to the ever-increasing list.

To properly study dinosaurs and learn their secrets, though, we must protect them. One of the most important dinosaur stories this year wasn’t about science, but about theft. An illicit Tarbosaurus skeleton – pieced together from multiple specimens smuggled out of Mongolia–has brought wide attention to the fossil black market, as well as the poachers and commercial dealers who fuel it. The fate of this dinosaur remains to be resolved, but I’m hopeful that the dinosaur will be returned home and will set a precedent for more vigorously going after fossil thieves and their accomplices.

Out of all the 2012 dinosaur stories, though, I’m especially excited about Nyasasaurus. The creature’s skeleton is as yet too fragmentary to know whether it was true dinosaur or the closest relative to the Dinosauria as a whole, but, at approximately 243 million years old, this creature extends the range of dinosaurs back in time at least 10 million years. That’s another vast swath of time for paleontologists to examine as they search for where dinosaurs came from, and those discoveries will help us better understand the opening chapters in the dinosaurian saga. That’s the wonderful thing about paleontology–new discoveries open new questions, and those mysteries keep us going back into the rock record.

And with that, I must say goodbye to Dinosaur Tracking. On Tuesday I’m starting my new gig at National Geographic’s Phenomena. I’ve had a blast during my time here at Smithsonian, and I bid all my editors a fond farewell as I and my favorite dinosaurs head off to our new home.

Editor’s Note: Best wishes to Brian on his future travels and we all thank him for his hard work over the past 4 (!) years, writing every day about something new on dinosaurs. It’s not nearly as easy as he makes it look. – BW

Heterodontosaurs were freaky. If you don’t believe me, check out the time-lapse reconstruction of this Heterodontosaurus head by artist Tyler Keillor. Released earlier this month in conjunction with a massive monograph on these dinosaurs in ZooKeys, the video beautifully demonstrates how our changing understanding of paleobiology is reviving even classic dinosaurs.

Heterodontosaurus was originally described in 1962. This ornithischian was a relatively small dinosaur, only about four feet long, but the creature’s name is a clue to its Jurassic weirdness. Heterodontosaurus, like its close relatives, had a toolkit of different teeth (or a “heterodont dentition) in its mouth that would have allowed the dinosaur to slice meat, insects, and vegetation. The dinosaur’s teeth are a tell-tale indicator that it was an omnivore. Even more recently, a heterodontosaurid from China named Tianyulong showed that these ornithischians –as distantly-related to birds as possible while still being a dinosaur–had manes of feather-like bristles. Put the whole thing together, and you get what Keillor has created–a Mesozoic equivalent of a wild boar, and one of the strangest-looking dinosaurs ever.

[Hat-tip to Thomas Holtz.]

About 95 million years ago, in Cretaceous Australia, an aggregation of small dinosaurs scurried along an ancient lake margin in what is the world’s only known “dinosaur stampede.” Exactly what caused the dinosaurs to scatter is a mystery. A set of larger tracks, found at the same quarry, have been cast as the footprints of a big predator who was stalking the mixed herd. But, as the rock record shows, this bigger dinosaur passed by at a different time than that of the stampede. And that bigger dinosaur may not have been a carnivore. A recent reassessment of the site raised the possibility that a large herbivore, akin to Muttaburrasaurus, left the tracks. We really don’t know what caused so many little dinosaurs to skitter away, or even come together in such numbers.

Nevertheless, the dramatic imagery of something like Australovenator pouncing on little ornithopods is hard to beat, and the Lark Quarry site–where the stampede is preserved–recently spawned a hyperbolic documentary. Now there’s a musical version, too. At the 2012 Museum’s Australia National Conference in Elder Hall, Adelaide, performers Michael Mills, Amy Donahue, Tahlia Fantone, Morgan Martin and Tom Goldsmith played out their own version of the dinosaur stampede.

Sadly, the performance perpetuates the myth that the stampede was sparked by a prowling carnivore. The truth is that we don’t know. I can’t necessarily blame the creators, though. Singing “You have to run, run, run. You have to hit top speed. Why? We don’t really know. But there’s still evidence of a dinosaur stampede!” doesn’t work quite as well.

For over a century, non-avian dinosaurs have been symbols of extinction. Our awe at their success, and our puzzlement at their ultimate demise, have made them perfect foils for our worries and fears. During World War I, for example, anti-war protestors cast dinosaurs as brutes who drove themselves into extinction by investing too much in their armor and weapons. Later, during the Cold War era, the asteroid strike that closed the Age of Dinosaurs was presented as a Mesozoic precursor to what mutual assured destruction might do to the planet. Not only have we looked to dinosaurs for lessons about what the future might hold, but we’ve also used them as icons of what might happen if we trade compassion for size and strength.

The 1967 Russian cartoon Mountain of Dinosaurs used extinction in a more specific and culturally subversive way. Rather than a literal lesson about dinosaurs–the fossil record doesn’t contain any hint that courting sauropods gave each other edible bouquets of ferns–the short warns about what happens if powerful stewards meant to care for individuals actually stifle those they are charged to protect. Dinosaurs didn’t die because of climate change, the short says, but because their eggs became so thick-shelled in response to colder temperatures that the baby dinosaurs couldn’t hatch. The shells (yes, the eggshells speak) mindlessly drone that they are doing their “duty,” but by growing thicker and thicker they kill the nascent sauropods. The scene is the saddest dinosaur cartoon I’ve ever seen, and it seems to be a metaphor for the Soviet government suppressing the rights of individual citizens. Indeed, the death of dinosaurs was not only used by Americans to issue dire warnings–they are an international symbol of extinction.

About five years ago, the movie gossip site Ain’t It Cool News pulled back the curtain on a Jurassic Park we’ll never see. A scrapped script for the franchise’s fourth film told a tale of dinosaurs that had not only been brought back from extinction but had also been further modified to make them humanoid soldiers. Sadly, the plot had nothing to do with Axe Cop’s Dinosaur Soldier.

Thanks to a little Internet sleuthing, we now know what those dinosaurian troops would have looked like. Earlier this week io9 posted concept art from the discarded version of Jurassic Park 4. It turns out that, for once, Hollywood hype was right. If this movie was actually made, Jurassic Park 4 would have been one of the strangest blockbuster-budget features ever made. I guess Spielberg really wasn’t kidding when he hinted that the story would have taken the franchise in a totally new direction.

Even though I’ll watch just about anything with dinosaurs in it–hell, it’s part of my job–I think this version of Jurassic Park 4 is best left to the annals of movie history. The dinosaurs have thrice imperiled people on islands and have torn a path of devastation over the mainland once. The fact that Jurassic Park 3 brought some of the original characters back to one of the islands showed the the franchise ran out of ideas very early, and inventing dinosaur soldiers was a crazy attempt to add novelty to an already faltering series. Not to mention the fact that creating dinosauroids to wipe out already-created raptors and tyrannosaurs sounds like the cure might end up being worse than the initial problem.

Which brings up the question of whether there should even be another Jurassic Park sequel. The franchise left off on a bad note, not to mention the atrocious comics and lackluster video games that have lately cropped up. Maybe it’s best to simply let the dinosaurs rest.

Michael Crichton’s original story was brilliant, and the movie adaptation will always be a cultural milestone for being the first film to convincingly bring dinosaurs back to life. But it seems that Universal hasn’t had a clue what to do with the dinosaurs since they got them. Finding ever-more conceits for people to run for their lives from Mesozoic monsters is difficult, and maybe there simply isn’t a way to recreate the awe audiences felt when they saw the first film. You would think the studio would have learned their lesson after running the JAWS franchise into the ground, but, given that Hollywood is so low on ideas that Hungry, Hungry Hippos is really going to be a movie, I guess I can’t blame them for going back to Jurassic Park‘s primeval wellspring one more time.

The end of the Cretaceous ended in one of the most catastrophic mass extinctions of all time. Among the various forms of life that were toppled were the non-avian dinosaurs. Triceratops and company didn’t exactly fall like dominoes, but, in this short video created by Flippycat.com, domino dinosaurs replay the epic destruction. And stay tuned for the behind-the-scenes video at the end. Just as the last non-avian dinosaurs had an evolutionary backstory stretching back millions and millions of years, it took a long time to set up the toy dinosaurs for their downfall.

Triceratops at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

Triceratops was an A+ dinosaur. But, awesome as the hulking ceratopsid was, it didn’t have mutant superpowers. Indeed, despite a website’s claim to the contrary, there’s no evidence that this three-horned behemoth defended itself with poisonous quills.

Even though it was posted over a year ago, I’ve received a few emails this week asking about a Listverse post by user “TyB” titled “Top 10 Dinosaurs That Aren’t What They Were.” For the most part, the list is a simple summary of how new discoveries and ideas have revitalized images of dinosaurs. When the article gets to Triceratops, though, the scientific accuracy careens off the rails.

Rather than being covered in smooth, wrinkly skin, the article states, Triceratops had “alligator-like, flat scales, called scutes, on its belly, and the rest of its body was covered in large scales and knobs.” I don’t know of any published study on Triceratops’ body covering, but it wouldn’t be surprising if, like other dinosaurs, Triceratops had bumpy skin with larger knobs or ornaments here and there. But here’s where things get strange:

Its back and tail also had a series of weird, fist-sized bumps, each one holding a nipple-like structure which has yet to be explained by scientists. These structures may very well be anchoring points for porcupine-like quills, like those found on Triceratops’ older cousin, Psittacosaurus. Or perhaps, some scientists suggest, they were poison glands, oozing toxins to protect the Triceratops’ hindquarters from T-Rex attacks.

I have no idea what this blogger is talking about. I had never heard the idea of a poisonous Triceratops before reading the list, and I don’t know of any paleontologist who has advocated such a notion. I think I know where the post’s author got the basis for their idea, though. For years, there have been rumors of a Triceratops–now on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science–that was preserved with skin impressions and possible evidence of bristles along the tail. The scuttlebutt, along with evidence of feather-like bristles in the archaic ceratopsian Psittacosaurus, spurred artists to start putting tufts of quills on Triceratops tails.

No one has formally published a description of these structures, though. Whether they’re truly bristles, some other true body covering or a preservational artifact is unknown. It’s not unreasonable to think that Triceratops had patches of bristles, but the truth is that there’s no positive evidence that such ornamentation actually adorned the dinosaur, either.

But I’m confounded by the suggestion that the base of the quills provided space for “poison glands.” Bristles on Triceratops are iffy to start with, and no one has ever demonstrated that dinosaurs used venom or other toxins for defense. In 2009, one group of researchers proposed that the feathered, sickle-clawed Sinornithosaurus had a venomous bite, but their suggestion was quickly refuted. There’s so evidence that dinosaurs were venomous, poisonous, toxic or otherwise relied on biological warfare. As far as I can tell, the toxic Triceratops is entirely the invention of the list’s author.

That’s not all. In the same post, the author states that “After examining the beak and jaws, paleontologists reached the conclusion that Triceratops may have been partially carnivorous, probably scavenging after T-Rex, or even scaring smaller predators away from their kills.” Again, no one has actually studied this in detail, but, unlike the poison hypothesis, this idea is actually plausible.

Paleontologist and artist Mark Witton raised this point in a description of a gorgeous Styracosaurus illustration he drew a few years ago. As Witton pointed out, the scissor-like jaws of big ceratopsids were probably capable of slicing through flesh as well as plants, and it’s not unreasonable to think that these dinosaurs occasionally picked over meaty carcasses to supplement their diets with some protein. After all, as paleontologist Darren Naish has illustrated, cows and deer do the same thing today. Herbivores can indulge in a meaty meal, just as carnivores sometimes chomp fruit and greens. What we need now is someone to model how a Triceratops skull would handle munching on flesh and bone to put some more science behind the speculation.

What could be better than seeing a living Triceratops? Riding one, of course. Doctor Who showed us that much.

Sadly, old “three horned face” is long gone. I wouldn’t count on the dinosaur to be brought back to us by way of genetic experiments or alien arks filled with dinosaurs. But don’t despair, Triceratops fans. An art group called Wreckage International combined Triceratops with a Jeep to create “Adrianne,” a working autosaurus. You can hear about how Adrianne was created here. No word yet on whether the next model will resemble Torosaurus.

[Hat-tip to Texas Triffid Ranch]

“Feathers” by Randall Munroe, from http://xkcd.com/

Anyone who regularly reads this blog knows that there’s a very easy way to make me annoyed–all you have to do is start whining about how dinosaurs are less cool since paleontologists discovered that many non-avian species sported tufts and coats of fluff, fuzz, bristles and feathers. My reaction is usually along the lines of “Brian SMASH!” Even though I understand that some people find scaly, monstrous dinosaurs aesthetically appealing, I have no patience for the callow assertion that science has somehow ruined dinosaurs through the addition of plumage.

Cartoonist Randall Munroe summed up my feelings–albeit in a more concise and positive way–this week at XKCD. Restoring dinosaurs with protofuzz and feathers isn’t just about giving Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and company a new look. Dinosaur feathers, and feather-like structures, are allowing paleontologists to think of dinosaurs in new ways. In particular, Munroe cites a PLoS One study about how feathers may have played into the predatory behavior of sickle-clawed dromaeosaurs  such as Deinonychus. According to paleontologist Denver Fowler and co-authors, Deinonychus may have used its famous “killing claw” to pin down small prey just like modern hawks and eagles do. More than that, the avian raptors flap to help stabilize themselves while immobilizing their prey, and Deinonychus–almost certainly a feathered dinosaur–may have done the same.

Deinonychus might have flapped its arms to help restrain prey. Art by Emily Willoughby, image from Wikipedia.

We can’t know for sure whether Deinonychus killed prey like a big, grounded version of a hawk. But it’s possible. Either way, though, studies like these show that prehistoric dinosaur feathers are allowing paleontologists to look to modern birds to generate new hypotheses and tease out previously-unknown aspects of dinosaur lives. As I’ve mentioned before, feathers are the key to figuring out dinosaur colors. How wonderful is that? Again, Munroe says it better than I can: “The past keeps getting cooler!”

Post script: Munroe isn’t the only cartoonist to take on dinosaurs this week. FoxTrot’s Bill Amend had a few suggestions for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s dinosaur hall renovation. Paleontology curator Matt Carrano responded to the idea of installing a “Tourist Chompsognathus” at our Around the Mall blog.

What do Spider-Man, a dinosaur and a banana have in common? This is not a trick question. In this old animated public service announcement–dredged from the depths of the internet by io9–Spider-Man stops the rampage of an amphibious carnosaur, and all he asks for in return is a simple banana. I can only imagine that the wall-crawler had an unfortunate realization soon after he swung away–”You fool! Think of all the bananas you could have bought with four hundred million dollars!”

Spinosaurus was named for its long neural spines. What would you call it? Photo by Kabacchi, image from Wikipedia.

Dinosaur names are important. Each moniker is a title that encompasses the various bones and specimens that paleontologists use to bring dinosaurs to life. When I write Tyrannosaurus rex, for instance, the name instantly conjures up an image of a hulking, deep-skulled bone-crusher that roamed western North America during the last two million years of the Cretaceous. A dinosaur’s name conveys a lot of information.

Some names are more mundane than others. Allosaurus is one of my favorite dinosaurs, but her name translates to “different lizard.” Not very inspiring. Alternatively, some dinosaur names can be hard to pronounce. I always pause before I say Amphicoelias to make sure I don’t butcher the sauropod’s name. And, then again, some dinosaur names are unintentionally funny. Pantydraco, anyone?

Just as there are people who are put off by dinosaur feathers, though, some folks are irritated by what they deem “dinosaurs with dumb names.” One of my neighbors over at WIRED, humorist Lore Sjöberg, wrote a brief whine featuring a list of dinosaurs that he thinks should be renamed for dignity’s sake.

Now, there are some dinosaur names that I’m not totally enamored with. While I understand the dinosaur’s symbolic status, Bicentenaria argentina doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and the same goes for the unevocative Panamericansaurus (yes, named after Pan American Energy). Then there are the names that appeal to the more puerile portion of my sense of humor. Read the name Texasetes too fast and you may get the dinosaur confused with a part of the male anatomy (not to mention the actual debate over whether the name of Megalosaurus should really be “Scrotum“), and you should always be careful with the pronunciation of Fukuiraptor unless you’re actually trying to insult the allosaur.

But what baffles me is that Sjöberg didn’t pick any of these names. Instead, his list includes the likes of Spinosaurus and Giraffatitan. I get his beef with dinosaurs named after places (Albertosaurus, Edmontosaurus, etc.), and I agree that Gasosaurus was comically unimaginative, but Iguanodon? The second dinosaur ever named, and one of the most iconic prehistoric creatures named for the clue in its teeth that led Gideon Mantell to rightly hypothesize that the dinosaur was an immense herbivore? I have to wonder whether Sjöberg would consider “Iguanasaurus– the original proposed name for the dinosaur–to be a step back or an improvement.

I just don’t get Sjöberg’s contention that Giraffatitan is “terrible” because–*gasp*–the sauropod wasn’t actually a big giraffe. Strict literalism only in naming dinosaurs, please. And, really, what would Sjöberg suggest as a replacement for Spinosaurus? When Ernst Stromer found the theropod, the most distinctive thing about the dinosaur was its enormous vertebral spines. What would you call it? Suchomimus–a cousin of Spinosaurus–is a little more poetic, but I like Stromer’s choice just fine.

There’s no reason to focus on the negative, though. There are plenty of awesome dinosaur names. Yes, yes, Tyrannosaurus rex will always be the best, but I still get a kick out of saying the names of the enigmatic sauropod Xenoposeidon, the dromaeosaur Pyroraptor, the stegosaur Miragaia, the ceratopsian Spinops, and the oviraptorid Khaan (“KHAAAAAAN!“). Not every dinosaur name is easily pronounced (say Willinakaqe ten times fast) or truly encapsulates the nature of the animal, but at least paleontologists aren’t naming species after online casinos. Not yet, anyway.

I adore feathered dinosaurs. It feels a little strange to say that, but it’s true. Few things make me happier than seeing delicately-rendered restorations of theropods covered in fuzz and ceratopsians with some accessory bristles. The various bits of plumage–from quill-like structures to true feathers–make dinosaurs look even more wonderful and fantastic than the drab, scaly monsters I grew up with. And who wouldn’t love a fluffy like dinosaur like Sciurumimus, perhaps the cutest dinosaur of all time?

Of course, not everyone feels the same way. There are some people who want their dinosaurs to be scaly, scaly, scaly, science be damned. They weep, wail and gnash their teeth whenever a new study suggests that another branch of the dinosaur family tree might have been adorned with plumage. It’s as if they expect the Dinosauria to be consistent with an unchanging canon–sci-fi and comic fans suffer a similar apoplexy when one of their favorite characters deviates from their most cherished storyline.

io9′s “We Come From the Future” show recently debated whether science had “ruined” dinosaurs by decorating so many non-avian species with feathers. (Remember–birds are dinosaurs, too, and there have been some very scary birds in the history of life on earth). Granted, some restorations of feathery dinosaurs really do look stupid, and the minor plumes on the heads of Jurassic Park III‘s Velociraptor didn’t really help.

The show’s point-counterpoint debate on the matter isn’t totally serious, and it’s a way to get a tidbit of science out to a wider audience. That’s a good thing. All the same, I’m pretty sick of people who complain that feathers somehow detract from dinosaurian magnificence. How immature can you get? We all love the dinosaurs we first meet as kids, and, for many of us, those leviathans were drab and scaly. But those earlier versions have been slit from stem to stern by more active, colorful and complex dinosaurs, many of which had some kind of feather-like body covering. Which would you prefer? The scaly, sluggish pot-bellied Tyrannosaurus of the mid-20th century, or a svelte, agile predator that has a few patches of fuzz?

Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not saying that all dinosaurs looked like big chickens. Dinosaurs exhibited an array of body structures–from simple, fuzzy tubes to bristles and full-on flight feathers. Some species, like modern birds, even exhibited several different types of feathers. The weird Beipiaosaurus, for one, had fuzzy protofeathers on much of its body but also had a sort of tail fan created by a different feather type. And “feathered dinosaur” doesn’t mean that the animal was entirely cloaked in plumage. Take Psittacosaurus, for example–this little ceratopsian was a very, very distant relative of birds and had a row of bristles along its tail. The structures were probably visual signals, and I have no doubt that same was true among other dinosaurs. Feathers aren’t just about flight or insulation, but they’re also important in display and communication.

And feathers are the key to dinosaur color. I’m still awestruck that we can recreate the colors of creatures that have been extinct for tens of millions of years. By comparing the microscopic details of prehistoric dinosaur feathers to the feathers of modern birds, we can finally answer that most persistent of paleo questions. That fact, alone, makes feathered dinosaurs especially magnificent.

I’m weary of this Portlandia-esque attitude that dinosaurs are over if they’re feathered. Please. New scientific discoveries are allowing us to gain unprecedented insights into the biology of dinosaurs, including the lives of the fluffy species. Feathers are just part of that bigger picture, and I’m ecstatic that paleontologists are reconstructing dinosaurs in ever-greater detail. The point is this. Feathered dinosaurs are awesome. Deal with it.

The skull of a mounted Tarbosaurus. Photo by Jordi Payà, from Wikipedia.

The road home for an illicit Tarbosaurus is bound to be a long one. Earlier this summer, federal agents seized a skeleton of the tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus that had been put up for auction in New York City. The sale price for the dinosaur topped $1 million, but, as was long suspected and was soon made clear, the dinosaur was illegally smuggled into the United States. Even worse, the skeleton itself was almost certainly illegally excavated from Mongolia and subsequently smuggled out of the country. Mongolian officials, professional paleontologists, lawyers, and United States officials moved quickly to prevent the dinosaur from disappearing into the collection of the tyrannosaur’s prospective buyer.

I see these events as a victory. The fossil black market has robbed many countries of their natural history heritage, especially Mongolia and China, and I was glad to see so many concerned activists work together in the hope that the Tarbosaurus might be returned. As expert paleontologists have concluded, the Tarbosaurus undoubtedly came from Mongolia–a country with strict heritage laws about who can collect fossils, what can be collected, and what subsequently happens to the fossils. All the evidence accumulated so far supports to idea that the Tarbosaurus was looted from Mongolia. But the man who assembled the controversial Tarbosaurus doesn’t agree, and has filed a claim on the dinosaur. Eric Prokopi, who obtained the Tarbosaurus and stood to profit from the auction, believes that the dinosaur is rightly his.

As reported by Wynne Parry at LiveScience, Prokopi and his attorney are trying to defend the sale of the Tarbosaurus by drawing a distinction between raw fossils and the reconstructed end product. “We are just trying to create a factual distinction between a fossil which is imported and a finished piece which is what was being sold at the auction,” Prokopi’s attorney Michael McCullough said.

But this strategy entirely misses the point. Prokopi obviously put a great deal of time, money, and effort into the tyrannosaur skeleton, but that does not change the fact that the skeleton was almost certainly illegally excavated and, as customs documents demonstrate, smuggled into the United States through a false description. How hard Prokopi worked is absolutely irrelevant. And, frankly, Prokopi should have known better than to put so much effort into a significant dinosaur specimen when he admittedly had no idea where the specimen came from or how it was collected. The bottom line is quite simple–the Tarbosaurus was illegally removed from its home strata, and it should be returned to its country of origin of soon as possible.

Among living dinosaurs, the cassowary is one of the most fantastic. Photo by Paul IJsendoorn, from Wikipedia.

One of the reasons Jurassic Park was so successful–as a novel and a blockbuster film–is that it presented a plausible way to bring dinosaurs back to life. The idea that viable dinosaur DNA might be retrieved from bloodsucking prehistoric insects seemed like a project that could actually succeed. Even though the actual methodology is hopelessly flawed and would never work, the premise was science-ish enough to let us suspend our disbelief and revel in the return of the dinosaurs.

Nevertheless, Jurassic Park brought up the tantalizing possibility that scientists might one day resurrect a Brachiosaurus, Velociraptor or Triceratops. And every once in a while, rumors arise about someone who might just give the project a try. According to the latest round of internet gossip, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer is hoping to clone a dinosaur for an exotic vacation retreat. Palmer has since denied the rumors, but, for a moment, let’s run with the assumption that someone is going to pour millions of dollars into a dinosaur cloning project. Would it actually work?

As Rob Desalle and David Lindley pointed out in The Science of Jurassic Park and the Lost World, there were a lot of steps that Michael Crichton glossed over in his dinosaur cloning regime. The novelist never explained how scientists overcame issues of genetic contamination, figured out what a complete dinosaur genome should look like and, most important of all, figured out how to actually translate all that DNA into a viable dinosaur embryo. It’s not simply a matter of accumulating DNA pieces until scientists have mapped every gene. A creature’s genetics must be read and interpreted within a biological system that will create an actual living organism. There are innumerable hurdles to any speculative dinosaur cloning project, starting with the effort to actually obtain unaltered dinosaur DNA–something that has never been done, and may never be.

If Palmer, or anyone else, wants to create a dinosaur park, it would be far easier to set up a reserve for living dinosaurs. The cassowary–a flightless, helmeted bird–is sufficiently prehistoric-looking to make it a draw for visitors. True, it’s not a Velociraptor, but a cassowary is most certainly a dinosaur that does pack a mean kick. There are plenty of living dinosaurs that could use a hand through conservation programs, so perhaps it would be better to try to save some avian dinosaurs rather than bring their non-avian cousins back from the dead.

Almost 20 years since it first debuted, Jurassic Park is still the quintessential dinosaur movie. But what if the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras were flipped, with intelligent Velociraptor pondering the ferocity of our species? This YouTube parody imagines just that, and a follow-up cartoon depicts that dinosaurs’ amazement at seeing living elephants in “Quaternary Park.” I can only hope that the creators of the spoof eventually get to the famous chase sequence, with a tiger chasing after a jeep full of Velociraptor.