I don't think dinosaurs had feathers.

[CuzinEd]

Dinosaurs most likely tasted like chicken.

 

[Haint]

Dinosaurs are not real. The Jews Elites hid fake bones all over the world to make people believe that God doesnt exist. Just like NASA tries to make you believe that space is real.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I know some of them did. But I still don't like feathered Dinosaurs. I was a Dinosaur kid in the 90's. We didn't have Pokemon in the late 80's early and mid 90's. We had Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were feather free and if they were carnivores, they were monster like killing machines. That's how I prefer to remember them. In the past 20 years that has been a push to make dinosaurs cute. I don't care for it. The feathers thing hasn't helped.

Quite a few dinosaurs were already pretty cute without feathers. To me, anyway. I also think opossums are adorable little scamps.

 

[draggs]

mesozoic era was 186 million years long

earliest found dinosaur fossil with "feathers" is early cretaceous. cretaceous lasted 79 million years

very large majority of dinosaurs that ever lived didn't have anything we would call feathers

 

[Seafarer]

Carnotaurus is another Dino that is pretty much confirmed to not have had feathers (due to scale imprints being found next to the fossil)

 

[Seafarer]

I don't think dinosaurs had fathers. I saw Jurassic Park and all the dinos were female.

IIRC the reason why Dinos like the Velociraptor (insert “JP raptor is actually Deinonychus/Utahraptor factoid here) didn’t have feathers despite paleontologists consulted for the film saying the contrary, is because feathers/hair were notoriously difficult and expensive to animate with early CGI (plus there was and still is a debate on if larger Dromeosaurs had feathers or to what extent they did).

 

[glass_houses]

IIRC the reason why Dinos like the Velociraptor (insert “JP raptor is actually Deinonychus/Utahraptor factoid here) didn’t have feathers despite paleontologists consulted for the film saying the contrary, is because feathers/hair were notoriously difficult and expensive to animate with early CGI (plus there was and still is a debate on if larger Dromeosaurs had feathers or to what extent they did).

No, because at that time they hadn't yet determined that raptors had feathers. The Jurassic Park book was published in 1990, and the movie made in 1993. The concept of feathered dinosaurs had been kicking round for a long time, a couple centuries as it happens, but there was no convincing fossil proof until around 2000. After that, re-examination of known skeletons showed the scars of feathers anchored on the bone in a number of families. One of the Velociraptors was identified as having secondary feathers in... 2005? After that it was determined/assumed that all raptors were feathered to an extent.

As for Universal's refusal to update their dinosaur models in the later movies, or their decision to add made up monsters to the franchise... let's not get into that, I'd probably end up screaming and throwing things at the walls, and the neighbours would complain.

 

[Strix454]

Paleontology suffers from massive amounts of speculation. There are all sorts of thin theories about dinosaurs that are transformed into common assumptions that then infect popular culture. The feathers thing has been around forever lurking the background of paleontology. The right people rise to the right positions in the field and suddenly the case for it becomes much better.
Lurking in the background of course is a whole set of political and ideological issues that depend on feathered dinosaurs.

People will say that is crazy. That politics and so on could never impact a science. But many people have of course forgotten someone like Stephen Jay Gould who had all kinds of prestige in Paleontology and spent alot of his time trying to ensure that the conclusions of Palentology properly followed the "facts" of Marxism.

My view is that we know very little about the lives of dinosaurs and how they biologically operated. Any representation of how they moved or their external appearance or their behaviors is all the worst kind of unscientific guesswork. The rainbow colored feather dino birds are not any more accurate than the monster lizards.

 

[The Ugly One]

birds all have gay-lookin' beaks, not cool blood-dripping fangs

 

[Crex Crex]

mesozoic era was 186 million years long

earliest found dinosaur fossil with "feathers" is early cretaceous. cretaceous lasted 79 million years

very large majority of dinosaurs that ever lived didn't have anything we would call feathers

The oldest feathered dinosaur is actually Anchiornis from the jurassic which is 150 million years old.
The two major dinosaur lineages (saurischians and ornitischians) split up even earlier and feathered members of both groups are known, so their common ancestor (something close to the first dinosaur) probably already had feathers. Pterosaurs, which are the dinosaurs' closest relatives, were also covered in feather-like down so the origin of feathers is even further than that.
Large dinosaurs lost them to avoid overheating though, depictions of turkey T-Rexes are retarded.

 

[timewave0]

Dinosaurs walked during biblical times and the earth aint but 6,000 years old. Anyone who says otherwise is a blasphemer. The dinosaurs had feathers and could all fly at first, but the dinosaurs who rejected Christ lost their feathers as a punishment from God.

 

[CuzinEd]

Paleontology suffers from massive amounts of speculation. There are all sorts of thin theories about dinosaurs that are transformed into common assumptions that then infect popular culture. The feathers thing has been around forever lurking the background of paleontology. The right people rise to the right positions in the field and suddenly the case for it becomes much better.
Lurking in the background of course is a whole set of political and ideological issues that depend on feathered dinosaurs.

People will say that is crazy. That politics and so on could never impact a science. But many people have of course forgotten someone like Stephen Jay Gould who had all kinds of prestige in Paleontology and spent alot of his time trying to ensure that the conclusions of Palentology properly followed the "facts" of Marxism.

My view is that we know very little about the lives of dinosaurs and how they biologically operated. Any representation of how they moved or their external appearance or their behaviors is all the worst kind of unscientific guesswork. The rainbow colored feather dino birds are not any more accurate than the monster lizards.

Science has a habit of discarding things they don't agree with. Ignoring things as well. Most often there are people with money backing any kind of scientific research and these people have agendas. If they find something that goes against it, they will just toss is or hide it. It's not nearly as cut and dry as people seem to think it is.

But most everything about Dinosaurs is basically guess work. It changes over the years. Like the whole feathers thing. No one would have believed it 30 or 40 years ago. The same thing with them being warm blooded or related to birds. The idea that they were warm blooded and active was a huge leap to make.

 

[Crex Crex]

But most everything about Dinosaurs is basically guess work. It changes over the years. Like the whole feathers thing. No one would have believed it 30 or 40 years ago. The same thing with them being warm blooded or related to birds. The idea that they were warm blooded and active was a huge leap to make.

Eh it depends. Fossil collection and analysis methods have made huge leaps, if you have something very well preserved you might be able to learn a lot about an animal with minimal speculation. We even know the colouration for some dinosaurs now.

 

[Airbrushed Van Art]

I think that there’s a direct correlation between the people pushing for “every single dinosaur was a fluffy, fat, feathered bird of paradise with rainbow colors” and progressive twitter types. Pushing this interpretation of dinos is in parallel with pulling down the establishment. Like removing classical works of literature and philosophy because of identity politics.

 

[JellyMaggot]

regardless of your opinions on TREY the Explainer, this video covers most dinosaurs and talks about whether or not they "possess feathers" based on what we know. But basically, most ornithischians and sauropods (the vegans) didnt really have any save for maybe some decorative quills on their tails, and larger dinos like t.rex realistically couldn't have dense feather coverage as their bodies would likely overheat. At most, big guys would have a few little feathers comparable to the hair on elephants or rhinos. Many of the smaller theropods, though, had evidence of feathering in the form of imprints and feather quill indents in bones. Some fossils found in lagerstätten (fossil sites with bizarrely well-fossilized specimens) even have had their color patterns preserved. One of my favorite examples of this is Sinosauropteryx prima:

 

[Ookoo Squad]

The interesting thing about the whole feathers deal is how long a time span we are talking about. I think people get the impression that there is a linear scales -> feathers progression and a linear flightless -> flight progression, but there was plenty of time for lines of dinosaurs to gain, and then lose, feathers. And even to gain, and then lose, flight. Some of the earlier tyrannosaurs (like Yutyrannus) had feathers, but the larger, bigger ones in later eras lost them. There is even a theory that some of the 'raptors' like deinonychus, utahraptor, velociraptor, etc, were descended from animals which could fly (similar to modern ratites ), or even that their young had flight but lost it as they aged.

At most, big guys would have a few little feathers comparable to the hair on elephants or rhinos.

The one place where I could imagine large elephant+sized dinosaurs with full feathers would be in colder climates, analogous to mammoths and mastodons. I wouldn't find it shocking if some of the large species or subspecies in northern Alberta / Yukon / Alaska had thicker feathers. Yes, it wasn't as cold back then, but it wasn't balmy either, and we know that there were dinosaurs which lived in places where the winter temperatures regularly dropped below zero.

Surprised nobody's posted the preserved dinosaur tail, found in amber. While I am quite convinced a lot of the smaller dinosaurs had feathers, what I don't always get is how their tails are often portrayed in paleo-art as having a birdlike fan of avian feathers. Perhaps for ones which had recently lost flight (see above) that might make sense, but the one tail we have discovered intact basically just looked like a "furry raptor tail", for lack of a better description.

 

[glass_houses]

The interesting thing about the whole feathers deal is how long a time span we are talking about. I think people get the impression that there is a linear scales -> feathers progression and a linear flightless -> flight progression, but there was plenty of time for lines of dinosaurs to gain, and then lose, feathers. And even to gain, and then lose, flight. Some of the earlier tyrannosaurs (like Yutyrannus) had feathers, but the larger, bigger ones in later eras lost them. There is even a theory that some of the 'raptors' like deinonychus, utahraptor, velociraptor, etc, were descended from animals which could fly (similar to modern ratites ), or even that their young had flight but lost it as they aged.


The one place where I could imagine large elephant+sized dinosaurs with full feathers would be in colder climates, analogous to mammoths and mastodons. I wouldn't find it shocking if some of the large species or subspecies in northern Alberta / Yukon / Alaska had thicker feathers. Yes, it wasn't as cold back then, but it wasn't balmy either, and we know that there were dinosaurs which lived in places where the winter temperatures regularly dropped below zero.

Surprised nobody's posted the preserved dinosaur tail, found in amber. While I am quite convinced a lot of the smaller dinosaurs had feathers, what I don't always get is how their tails are often portrayed in paleo-art as having a birdlike fan of avian feathers. Perhaps for ones which had recently lost flight (see above) that might make sense, but the one tail we have discovered intact basically just looked like a "furry raptor tail", for lack of a better description.

View attachment 4740565

View attachment 4740574

The problem with the fossil record, however, it's that it's very difficult to determine whether fossil remains belong to males or females. This is a huge issue with species that were extremely sexually dimorphic. In many extant species today, especially birds, males and females are very different. If you're only looking at bones or a random piece in amber, there's really no way to tell. Some fossil skeletons have been found to have traces of medullary bone, and have been conclusively proven to belong to females, but everything else is educated guess work. The amber tail could have belonged to a sexually dimorphic species, or it could have been preserved outside of mating season where there was no need for fancy display feathers. It's just so difficult to know. Paleontologists still can't decide how many tricerotops species there were, because at least some skeletons found were juvenile specimens that look very different at separate stages during the beastie's growth phase until they become adult.

You could dig up the entire world looking for dinosaurs and still end up guessing. Take spinosaurus for instance; reconstructions are so wildly different today compared to even a couple decades ago.

I love paleontology, it's just so much fun. There's always an incredible discovery just around the corner.

 

[Tanuki Mixed Nuts]

I think dinosaurs wore primitive ghillie suits, actually.

 

[ditto]

Did the dinosaurs exist?

Dinosaur bones exist. There's no proof dinosaurs weren't just giant walking skeletons.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I think that there’s a direct correlation between the people pushing for “every single dinosaur was a fluffy, fat, feathered bird of paradise with rainbow colors” and progressive twitter types. Pushing this interpretation of dinos is in parallel with pulling down the establishment. Like removing classical works of literature and philosophy because of identity politics.

I can see that but I mostly see it as a mixture of juvenile contrarianism (in my mind the sort of person that carries on about dinosaur feathers is a lot like the one that goes on about Vikings beating Columbus to the New World or Biblically accurate angels) AND genuine delight in some wacky shit (like my own appreciation for Biblically accurate angels).