494
fossils (mander.xyz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] scytale@lemm.ee 23 points 8 months ago

What’s the current consensus, did dinosaurs look more like chickens?

[-] rockerface@lemm.ee 28 points 8 months ago

Some definitely had feathers, and some likely were brightly colored

[-] Wiggle_Hard@hilariouschaos.com 4 points 8 months ago

In my mind, I picture of Sasquatch riding a dinosaur chicken

[-] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

Mods, why was this piece of absolute poetry removed?

[-] Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

From what I know, most raptors had feathers and that's where birds came from.

The broader group of theropods, including the T-Rex, had a precursor to feathers literally called "Dinofuzz".

All other kinds of dinosaurs I believe are actually scaly like we thought.

[-] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 17 points 8 months ago

This is still not something we can answer with certainty. For a couple of years there, paleontology thought that psittacosaurus had feathers on its tail - and as a ceratopsian, on the complete other side of the dinosaur 'tree', that would suggest the base form for dinosaurs must have feathers and any that didn't have them lost them at some point in their lineage (and thus could potentially regain them if the DNA was deactivated rather than lost). Now the feathers are disputed again, as "something else" - spines of some sort unrelated to feathers.

No doubt lots of dinosaurs were scaly, but I don't think anyone would say with certainty that feathers were limited to late theropods.

[-] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 months ago

I've also heard some contention over the ground up evolutionary theory for birds. Mainly that you don't evolve flight from jumping up, but rather from jumping tree to tree and gliding. I'm certainly not an expert in this but as a layman it does make sense to me, if you jump to escape a predator on the ground you inevitably come back down, but if you can make it to the next tree and your predator can't, that would indeed be a significant enough advantage to be passed down to your children. Seems easier to convert lizardy gliders like on the yi qi to wings too, rather than lizardy arms to wings.

[-] StalinIsMaiWaifu@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 8 months ago

Proto-feathers (basically hair) were basal to dinosaurs + pterosaurs, we have evidence for feathers on some dinosaurs (micro raptor had iridescent black feathers), fuzz on others (Psittacosaurus has long "quills" on its backend), and scales on others (Carnotosaurus, Diplodocus, large portion of T-Rex)

The idea right now is that the smaller ones probably had feathers, bigger ones had scales, unless they're from China, then everything has feathers

[-] burgersc12@mander.xyz 4 points 8 months ago

Check out Prehistoric Planet, they say they used the latest research to make the dinos, feathers and all

[-] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 3 points 8 months ago

... some of them.

this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
494 points (97.9% liked)

Science Memes

11189 readers
2766 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS