The Cold Blooded News The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society Volume 28, Number 9;   September, 2001

Proof of Feathered Dinosaurs Found

by Curt Steindler

A fossil of a juvenile Dromaeosaur, a duck-sized dinosaur discovered by Chinese farmers last year sports a downy coat from head to tail, bolstering evidence that feathers arose first for insulation and not flight. This fossil, which is dated between 126 million and 147 million years old, is the most complete of several found with feather-like features in China in recent years.

The skeleton is fringed with feathery impressions that could have been left by tufts of down and primitive feathers. This suggests that it and other two-legged carnivores called advanced theropods were warm-blooded. "There's strong evidence that these body coverings were originally insulation for warm-blooded dinosaurs and were only later co-opted for flight," said Mark Norell, chairman of the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Not all scientists agree. According to Storrs Olson, curator of birds at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, "There's nothing there that has a structure like a feather."

Thomas Holtz, Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, is particularly intrigued by herringbone patterns protruding from the fossil's arms and tail. According to Holtz, the fossil makes it increasingly plausible that theropods - including tyrannosaurus rex - were fluffy and not scaly. "These things were fluffy, probably sort of like a kiwi bird today, from the snout to tail," he said. "Sort of fuzzy killing machines."

"It is now impossible for any credible person to claim that birds are not theropod dinosaurs," said Richard O. Prum, curator of birds at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. "It's the final straw. We've all lived long enough for the dino-deniers to have to face the evidence. This comes as close to proof as we find in science."

(Compiled from AP sources and the April 25th edition of the LA Times.)

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