# The Feathered Dinosaur. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 26, 2001, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457 "2001-04-26T23:46:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2001, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/1 "2001-04-26T23:46:18Z")
[Found in China,](http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/04/25/spread.eagle.dinosaur/index.html) this fossil is the best evidence to date that some dinosaurs had feathers. The impressions of feathers in the fine-grained rock are so clearly visible, it’s impossible to rationally deny their existence (but watch the you-know-who types try to anyway). It’s a fossil of a Dromaeosaur, a small, duck-sized predator that lived 130,000,000 years ago. It will be on display at the [American Museum of Natural History](http://www.amnh.org/science/specials/dinobird.html) in New York for an indeterminate time. (By that, I mean I can’t find out how long it’s going to be there!) After that, it is scheduled to be taken to Texas so a CAT scan can be used to create a 3-D image of the skeleton. It’s believed that feathers provided insulation to retain body warmth before they conferred flight. These early feathers would not have provided lift (wrong shape) and early dinosaurs had solid bones and would have been too heavy to fly anyway. Click [here](http://research.amnh.org/vertpaleo/dinobird.html) for even more photos of this amazing find. I now have a reason to visit NYC this summer! ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2001, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/2 "2001-04-27T00:24:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jab1 \* > I now have a reason to visit NYC this summer! Opera, Symphonies, Broadway, Art Galleries famous throughout the world, Eight professional sports teams, thousands of music venues, and you figure now that they got the Duckasaurus, you’r gonna hit the Big Apple. sheesh. :)Tris ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2001, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/3 "2001-04-27T01:39:19Z")
Well, a feathered dinosaur sure will give more weight to the Robert Bakker “birds evolved from dinosaurs” camp. (And the age of Eoraptor don’t hurt, neither.) ---
**Author:** ![Lego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@Lego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lego)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/4 "2001-04-28T00:24:15Z")
And what are we supposed to debate? I’m not sure what tracer means about “the age of Eoraptor”. It was about 80 million years older than Archaeopterx, and wasn’t espeacially bird-like. And since this new dinosaur lived 15 million years after Archaeopteryx, it isn’t the ancestor of birds. Maybe an early flightless descendant of birds? ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/5 "2001-04-28T18:48:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lego \* > **And what are we supposed to debate?** The evolution of birds? Evolution itself? I put this post here to start a debate on either of those things. > [@](#): > > \*\*And since this new dinosaur lived 15 million years after Archaeopteryx, it isn’t the ancestor of birds. Maybe an early flightless descendant of birds? \*\* Maybe it means that most dinosaurs had feathers? Or even all of them? Or that only small dinosaurs (young or adult) had feathers, since only they would have had problems retaining body heat. (I should not have to point out to anyone that feathers are good insulation and that small animals lose body heat faster than large ones.) Feathers decay after they are shed and after the animal dies, so it’s not unreasonable to believe that the feathers of other dinosaurs were not fossilized. Also, it depends on what type of soil the animal was buried in. As the article notes, the impressions of this animal’s feathers was preserved because of the very fine soil that covered the corpse. Coarse soil would not have done this. I wonder if any of the dinosaurs in the upcoming _Jurassic Park III_ will have feathers…? ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/6 "2001-04-28T21:21:15Z")
I think that if Mankind’s Ancient Enemy, Satan–that Old Deceiver–can go to all the trouble of putting fossils in rocks in order to tempt wicked and sinful men into doubting the Inerrant WORD of GOD, he can certainly add a few feathers here and there, no? ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/7 "2001-04-28T21:43:36Z")
Lego wrote: > [@](#): > > I’m not sure what tracer means about “the age of Eoraptor”. It was about 80 million years older than Archaeopterx, and wasn’t espeacially bird-like. Precisely. The one family of Dinosauria that bears the closest resemblance to birds, structurally speaking, are the **raptor-like** dinosaurs. Thus, according to the most prevalent “birds evolved from dinosaurs” hypothesis, it was specifically a raptor-like dinosaur that birds evolved from. For a long time, this was a big sticking point, because the earliest raptor-like dinosaurs we had discovered dated from a mere 90 million years ago – too recent to have been the ancestors of _Archaeopteryx_. Then, we found _Eoraptor_. This was a raptor-like dinosaur that lived much, **much** earlier. Early enough, in fact, to have been one of the possible ancestors for _Archaeopteryx_. This gave a whole lot more weight to the birds-evolved-from-dinosaurs camp. ---
**Author:** ![Lego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@Lego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lego)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/8 "2001-04-28T22:41:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tracer \* > \*\*Lego wrote: > > > [@](#): > > > > I’m not sure what tracer means about “the age of Eoraptor”. It was about 80 million years older than Archaeopterx, and wasn’t espeacially bird-like. > > Precisely. > > The one family of Dinosauria that bears the closest resemblance to birds, structurally speaking, are the **raptor-like** dinosaurs. Thus, according to the most prevalent “birds evolved from dinosaurs” hypothesis, it was specifically a raptor-like dinosaur that birds evolved from. For a long time, this was a big sticking point, because the earliest raptor-like dinosaurs we had discovered dated from a mere 90 million years ago – too recent to have been the ancestors of _Archaeopteryx_. > > Then, we found _Eoraptor_. This was a raptor-like dinosaur that lived much, **much** earlier. Early enough, in fact, to have been one of the possible ancestors for _Archaeopteryx_. This gave a whole lot more weight to the birds-evolved-from-dinosaurs camp. \*\* “Raptor” is just part of the name. _Eoraptor_ is one of the most primitive dinosaurs ever discovered- some experts say it isn’t even a true theropod (clade containing most predatory dinosaurs and birds). Your term ‘Raptor-like’ is either the _Dromaeosauridae_, _Maniraptora_, or _Coelurosauria_- none of these taxa include _Eoraptor_. While all good remains of ‘raptor-like’ dinosaurs are Cretaceous, more fragmentary remains do go back to the middle Jurassic, before _Archaeopteryx_. The vast majority of books I read are about the classification of dinosaurs. I know that _Eoraptor_ is not really ‘raptor-like’, despite its raptory name. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2001, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/9 "2001-04-29T06:32:48Z")
> [@](#): > > _Eoraptor_ is not really ‘raptor-like’, despite its raptory name. D’OH! I’m gonna have to give the Discovery Channel a stern talkin’-to. ---
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2001, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/10 "2001-04-30T05:58:10Z")
Heard somewhere that the family trees of some modern flightless birds like the ostrich may not have included any flying birds and may have split off from the dinosaurs separately from the more common types of birds - so in effect, ostriches would be more closely related to their dinosaur ancestors than robins, geese, etc. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2001, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/11 "2001-04-30T19:19:18Z")
> [@](#): > > And since this new dinosaur lived 15 million years after Archaeopteryx, it isn’t the ancestor of birds. Maybe an early flightless descendant of birds? I’d say they’re cousins. After all, ceolecanths (sp?) are living hundreds of millions of years after their “descendants”. > [@](#): > > And since this new dinosaur lived 15 million years after Archaeopteryx, it isn’t the ancestor of birds. Maybe an early flightless descendant of birds? I would like to see a cite because I’m skeptical. What happened to their forelimbs? Raptors and archaeopterix had clawed forelimbs, but once wings became entirely specialized for flight, they would become useless and vestigal if a species stopped flying. We wouldn’t expect this to happen if dinosaurs with arms evolved directly into flightless birds. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2001, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/12 "2001-04-30T19:47:47Z")
sqweels wrote: > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > And since this new dinosaur lived 15 million years after Archaeopteryx, it isn’t the ancestor of birds. Maybe an early flightless descendant of birds? > > I’d say they’re cousins. Sure does sound that way. I mean, this 130-Myear-ago dromaeosaur had feathers. _Archaeopteryx_ – which lived, what, 145 Myears ago? – had feathers. All modern birds have feathers, but no modern reptiles do. The fact that **any** dinosaur species had feathers – **particularly** a species that came **after** _Archaeopteryx_ – is good evidence that the critters which _Archaeopteryx_ and all birds evolved from were in fact dinosaurs of some type. Perhaps closely related to this domaeosaur’s lineage. ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2001, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/13 "2001-05-01T00:26:04Z")
[QUOTE] _Originally posted by Lego_ \*\* > [@](#): > > _Eoraptor_ is not really ‘raptor-like’, despite its raptory name. \*\*I dunno. Look at the picture from this [website.](http://www.zoomdinosaurs.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinos/Eoraptor.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2001, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/14 "2001-05-01T04:48:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MEBuckner \* > \*\*I think that if Mankind’s Ancient Enemy, Satan–that Old Deceiver–can go to all the trouble of putting fossils in rocks in order to tempt wicked and sinful men into doubting the Inerrant WORD of GOD, he can certainly add a few feathers here and there, no? \*\* Wait a minute. I thought is was God who put all those fossils there to test the faithful. Damn. It’s hard to tell those two apart sometimes. Shall we take bets on whether the creationists will say it’s a bird and not really a dinosaur or that it’s a dinosaur and not really a bird (and the other dinosaurs just stuck the feathers on him with tar before they road him out of town on a rail.)? ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2001, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/15 "2001-05-02T00:38:21Z")
jab1 wrote: > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > _Originally posted by Lego_ > > **_Eoraptor_ is not really ‘raptor-like’, despite its raptory name.** > > I dunno. Look at the picture from this [website.](http://www.zoomdinosaurs.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinos/Eoraptor.shtml) Hey hey … howza bout that! That website also says that Eoraptor had **hollow bones** – just like modern birds do! Well, I’m convinced. If birds didn’t evolve from dinosaurs, then I’m a monkey’s uncle and Duane Gish is the greatest paleontologist that ever lived. ---
**Author:** ![krong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a88e4f/32.png) [@krong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/krong)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2001, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/16 "2001-05-02T18:42:13Z")
I thought the chinese bird dinosaur was _Sinosopteryx_(sp). This is what I remember from working at the ANS in Philadelphia. I have a video on it somewhere (it’s a NOVA or NGS video), but I mighta lent it to my friend’s kid. Am I correct in assuming that Dromeosaur is a group of dinos and not a species? ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2001, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/17 "2001-05-02T21:44:00Z")
You’re right. Here’s what [U.C. Berkeley](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/dromaeosauridae.html) has to say about them: > [@](#): > > Dromaeosaurs constitute a small clade of [theropod dinosaurs](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/theropoda.html) which exhibit some highly derived characteristics that they all share, especially modifications of the forelimb allowing for a flexible seizing function (which is thought to have been modified to create the bird’s “flight stroke”). According to current thinking, birds are hypothesized to have shared a common ancestor with dromaeosaurs sometime in the Jurassic period. They have yet to determine if it is a new species, according to the [American Museum of Natural History.](http://www.amnh.org/science/specials/dinobird.html) Whatever its name, this new fossil is 130,000,000 years old, which would put it later than the Jurassic, into the early Cretaceous. It would not be the link between birds and dinosaurs. ---
**Author:** ![Lego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@Lego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lego)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2001, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/18 "2001-05-02T23:05:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by krong \* > \*\*I thought the chinese bird dinosaur was _Sinosopteryx_(sp). This is what I remember from working at the ANS in Philadelphia. I have a video on it somewhere (it’s a NOVA or NGS video), but I mighta lent it to my friend’s kid. > > Am I correct in assuming that Dromeosaur is a group of dinos and not a species? \*\* Chinese Feathered Dinosaurs\* _Sinosauropteryx_ A small predator, related to the ‘compies’ in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. It had a coat of small feathers. _Protarchaeoptryx_ had symmetrical arm feathers. Although it lived later than _Archaeopteryx_, it was more primitive. _Beipiaosaurus_ had longer feathers similar to _Sinosauropteryx_, with branching structures on the ends. The largest feathered dinosaur, it was an herbivore with big claws. _Caudipterx_ had symmetrical feathers on its arms, and a display of decorative feathers on the tail. _Microraptor_ was perhaps the smallest non-avian dinosaur. It was fuzzy and possibly lived in trees. _Sinornithosaurus_ A relative of _Velociraptor_. It had long arms, and features in the shoyulder simialr to flying birds. The new specimen may be a juvenile of this genus. ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2001, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/19 "2001-06-18T21:48:45Z")
I revive this thread because two more fossils of apparently feathered dinosaurs have been unearthed in [New Mexico.](http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010618/sc/science_dinosaurs_dc_2.html) _Nothronychus_, (pronounced ``no-thron-EYE-kus’’), was a biped that weighed about a ton, was 15 to 20 feet long and stood 10 to 12 feet tall. What’s truly odd about this animal is that while it was a therapod like Tyrannosaurus, it was a _herbivore_! However, carnivore-to-herbivore evolution has been observed before. (These animals lived concurrently with T-rex, in the Cretaceous period. They are neither ancestors nor descendants of T-rex but cousins, evolutionarily speaking.) The other critter is a _coelurosaur_ (pronounced ``suh-LOOR-oh-sawr’’) a bit more than seven feet long and three feet tall. It was a carnivore. Unfortunately, no conclusive evidence of feathers was found on the fossils, but they are so similar to the ones previously found in China, paleontologists are confident in concluding these animals probably had feathers also. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2001, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457/20 "2001-06-18T22:43:21Z")
Not that I particularly want to argue on either side of the Creation/Evolution debate, but can someone propose a sequence of events that could have resulted in useful wings developing as a gradual process? i.e: the end result (flight) wasn’t predetermined in any way; Evolution didn’t ‘know’ where it was heading, so at each stage of development, the proto-wings must represent an advantage of some kind, even though they didn’t yet bestow the ability to fly. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feathered-dinosaur/63457.md?page=2)