I don't think dinosaurs had feathers.

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Why would they have? I never gave this any thought, just assumed my betters were right, until it up and occurs to me, these things were massive lizards that walk around, what the fuck is a feather going to do to help them? Chickens and turkeys may not move much, but they DO fly short distances, such as to get up on top of things, and they are clearly adapted from birds that flew more and so it's vestigial. And have you ever heard of a cold-blooded anything with a fucking feather? No.
 
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murph said:
It's all guesswork but T-rex arms do look like chicken wings.
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I agree that dinosaurs and birds are clearly related, I just think the feathers must have come along later as part of gaining flight. A pterodactyl could probably have had feathers (though even then you don't need them, as bats show).
 
Some allegedly did but not all. Plenty of speculative artists grab the idea and make everything look like its a drag queen. The most famous case with the Tyrannosaurus Rex is now assumed to only have small filaments along their back rather than outright feathers. Though again its speculative and argued over as something that supports or refutes their point rises up as more things are found. So really its just rocket tag but about animals that have been dead for so long its mind boggling.

Don't mind the idea of the various raptors having feathers as it brings to mind the still existing birds we have now. Just with a way scarier face and slightly more terrifying claws.
 
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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.
 
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Some lines of extinct dinosaurs had them like extant dinosaurs (birds) do. If you want to know how feathers evolved, look at the transition from feathers to scales on a chicken leg. Large dinosaurs would have had little to no feather coverage due to the body mass/body heat problem. (The larger you are the more likely you are to overheat; therefore animals tend to have less and less fur as they get larger, to prevent overheating. That's why extant rinos and elephants are all mostly hairless, and hairy elephants/mastodons and wooly rhinos disappeared at the end of the ice age peak).

If you want proof that birds are dinosaurs, look at this:

enormous-feet-cassowary-107046117.jpg
Zf4ak6EUXkUryghrQceZ9D-1200-80.jpg


Clever girl...
 
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The feathers on dinosaurs were most likely for thermoregulation (basically, it kept them warm). The pervading theory at the moment is that dinosaurs were mesothermic, meaning they were able to control their blood temperature via metabolic production of heat. Feathers act as a great insulator, so it would be an evolutionary advantage to have them or some kind of fur.

I would also like to point out that sharks and tuna fish are mesotherms, and they’re fish, which are almost always cold-blooded. There are exceptions to almost everything.

We will unfortunately never completely know why dinosaurs had feathers, but it’s fun to speculate.
 
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Cherry Eyed Hamster said:
We will unfortunately never completely know why dinosaurs had feathers, but it’s fun to speculate.
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I suspect that that feathers started out as insulation and very quickly became social signalling structures which were sexually selected for. Sexual selection can have some pretty bizarre results, to the point where certain traits are actually bad for the individual's survival chances. Peacocks, for instance; all they have to do to get laid is look good and dance well, but they can barely get away when something's trying to eat them.
 
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glass_houses said:
I suspect that that feathers started out as insulation and very quickly became social signalling structures which were sexually selected for. Sexual selection can have some pretty bizarre results, to the point where certain traits are actually bad for the individual's survival chances. Peacocks, for instance; all they have to do to get laid is look good and dance well, but they can barely get away when something's trying to eat them.
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For some dinosaur species, probably more for the smaller theropods, that was probably indeed the case.
 
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Cherry Eyed Hamster said:
For some dinosaur species, probably more for the smaller theropods, that was probably indeed the case.
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If you want an example of 'primitive' feathers, look at the emu. They're (meaning the feathers, not the bird) are fascinating. If you saw them and didn't know where they came from, at first you'd think you were looking at dry grass. An emu actually makes a rustling sound when it moves around, because those feathers move against each other like grass and sound like dry grass being rustled.

emu-feathers-up-close-15572121.jpg


Oh, and while I'm here, have another dinosaur foot.
1.jpeg
 
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