The discovery of the largest known feathered dinosaur was announced by scientists in China on Wednesday. Similar in size and shape to Tyrannosaurus rex, palaeontologists at the Chinese academy of sciences in Beijing have named the new species Yutyrannus huali, meaning "beautiful feathered tyrant". At nine metres long and weighing more than 1.4 tonnes, it is also the largest feathered animal ever discovered – either alive or extinct.I will say a few things about this in the next post.
Local farmers found three specimens in a small quarry in the Liaoning province of north-east China. Palaeontologists estimate that they are 125m years old, dating from the early Cretaceous period, and they believe that, like Tyrannosaurus rex, the animals hunted in packs. The three were found alongside the remains of a sauropod dinosaur that the researchers think they may have been hunting when they died.
Needless to say, this is not a feathered dinosaur.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2012/04/04/giant-feathered-tyrannosaurs/
ReplyDelete"As usual, the main gee-whiz points about Yutyrannus are already being widely discussed. We’ve known for a while (since the publication of Dilong paradoxus in 2004) that at least some tyrannosauroids possess(B) ‘stage 1 feathers’(/B) (Xu et al. 2004). That is, filamentous integumentary structures that seem to be evolutionary precursors to the true, complex feathers that evolved elsewhere within coelurosaurian theropods. [COLOR="Red"][B]Yutyrannus is another feathery/filamenty tyrannosauroid,[/B][/COLOR] but it’s remarkable in being huge – it’s about 9 m long, meaning that here is the first GIANT feathery/filamenty tyrannosauroid."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather
"Feather evolution was broken down into the following stages by Xu and Guo in 2009:
[B]1. Single filament[/B]
2. Multiple filaments joined at their base.
3. Multiple filaments joined at their base to a central filament
4. Multiple filaments along the length of a central filament
5. Multiple filaments arising from the edge of a membranous structure
6. Pennaceous feather with vane of barbs and barbules and central rachis
7. Pennaceous feather with an asymmetrical rachis
8. Undifferentiated vane with central rachis
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Feather_stages_diagram.svg/220px-Feather_stages_diagram.svg.png[/IMG]
Notice the part:
[B][COLOR="red"]Yutyrannus is another [U]feathery[/U]/filamenty tyrannosauroid,
[/COLOR][/B]
[B]Yutyrannus is in no way "feathery". [/B]
Notice the part:
ReplyDeleteYutyrannus is another feathery/filamenty tyrannosauroid,
Yutyrannus is in no way "feathery".
Yutyrannus has stage 1 feathers. That defines him as ''feathery'' (aka covered with feathers).
ReplyDeleteAngantyr, check out the next entry of April 7, 2012.
ReplyDelete