5 ms·

A Dinosaur with a Beak and Feathers Unearthed in China

94 points by MrJagil 10y ago

yareally 10y ago
> "It was not a bird, but a dinosaur that was a close relative of birds." I know it would lead to confusion in the article, but birds are classified as dinosaurs. However, there are many groups of dinosaurs and each classified by their evolutionary traits. Birds just happen to be the only group that survived to the present day. If dinosaurs are a superset of many species, birds would be a subset of them. The interesting aspect is they found one that had evolved just enough to have a beak, but retained many of the characteristics of more primitive dinosaurs. Many dinosaurs not considered birds also had feathers, so that's not overly significant alone. That said, countries like New Zealand had birds that went down a pretty similar evolutionary path that lived up until 700 or so years ago[1]. New Zealand is a pretty interesting place evolution wise. It answers the question of how birds would evolve if not exposed to any other major mammalian predators for centuries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Many dinosaurs also did not had feathers, some had scales, some had skin closet to mammals, and at least some were likeky warm blooded. Birds are only part of a single branch of the tree of dinosaurs, and currently it's more than likely that most dinosaurs did not had feathers and are not really related to birds in any particular manner.
  - yareally 10y ago
    If you had citations for any of that, I would love to read it. Birds have been scientifically classified as dinosaurs for at least the past 20 or so years[1] and many (obviously not modern ones) lived in parallel to other dinosaur species in the late Cretaceous Period. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avialae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avialae
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      All birds are dinosaurs not all dinosaurs are birds, birds evolved from Theropods, there are other orders and suborders which were an evolutionary deadened and had nothing to do with birds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theropoda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theropoda
      - yareally 10y ago
        From my first comment: > "If dinosaurs are a superset of many species, birds would be a subset of them."
        dogma1138 10y ago
        Birds are a subset of many species of dinosaurs but from one specific subgroup I wasn't contradicting you but some people think that all dinosaurs had feathers and are related to birds that is not the case. The feather thing was also known considerably earlier than people think as early as Darwin people published books about birds being related to some dinosaurs since we had very early feathered and winged fossils.
        yareally 10y ago
        Ah okay. Wasn't sure what you were leading to in your previous comments. I'm in agreement with you after your clarifications though :)
- jonchang 10y ago
  While we're clarifying nomenclature, I'd like to point out that "primitive" is to be avoided, as it may imply that a trait is simpler, inferior, or less adaptive, perpetuating the "ladder of progress" misconception of evolution. "Ancestral" is preferred and should always be applied to traits rather than taxa, e.g., "Tongtianlong limosus retained many ancestral characteristics of older dinosaurs"
  - yareally 10y ago
    Good point. I didn't think about that aspect. I'm only an amateur biologist, so didn't consider the wording. Ironically, I would consider a beak more primitive until the engineer in me screams teeth could be a sign of over engineering--not that I would personally give up my good (but high maintenance) teeth for a beak. Could probably write a entire book on "evolutionarily traits and trends for engineers."
    - jonchang 10y ago
      Absolutely-it's important to consider the selective environment that a trait evolved in and evaluate all possible tradeoffs. You can see this in certain fishes where pharyngeal jaws permit eating hard prey (new food source!) but also increase the processing time for soft prey (bad if you're competing against critters that eat faster). Beaks are good for some reasons and teeth for others.
    - avip 10y ago
      You may enjoy "principles of animal locomotion" - it's pretty engineering focused.
- vilhelm_s 10y ago
  Sure, but that does not contradict the statement in the article, right? Some dinosaurs are birds, but this one was not.
  - yareally 10y ago
    Correct, but the language throughout article would likely lead a reader to assume birds are not part of the dinosaur family, since it's never implied that birds are dinosaurs either. Pesky implicits can be a pain in more than just programming sometimes.
    - vilhelm_s 10y ago
      It does state "Oviraptorosaurs are not direct ancestors of birds, but share a common theropod dinosaur ancestor with the lineage that later evolved to birds."
- questionr 10y ago
  I wonder how this resurrection project is coming along http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1113874-the-frightening-discovery-of-the-mount-owen-claw/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1113874-the-frightening-disc... Also, would anyone have any good theories as to why dinosaurs evolved feathers? and from what did it evolve from? was it hair?
  - yareally 10y ago
    I believe feathers evolved from scales. I think they were first beneficial for dinosaurs for their likely elaborate courtship/mating rituals if birds are any indicator of how other dinosaurs found mates. Early feathers weren't useful for flying, keeping warm or making a creature look bigger, so I would figure the advantage that made them useful was related to mating.
- notadoc 10y ago
  The moa foot just looks like what you'd imagine a dinosaur foot to look like, doesn't it? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Moa_foot.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Moa_foot...
mfoy_ 10y ago
> Tongtianlong limosus — the name means “muddy dragon on the road to heaven” Did they name it after how they discovered it died? Ha. Imagine if species were given posthumous names based on how they were wiped out... Would Dodos would be "Eaten by sailors on a lonely island"?
- harveywi 10y ago
  > Would Dodos would be "Eaten by sailors on a lonely island"? That is precisely where the name came from; i.e. the accretions left behind by satiated sailors after feasting on the endangered birds. The Great Vowel Shift hides its etymological roots.
  - cjensen 10y ago
    The vowel shift[1] finished around the time the Dodo was discovered[2], so that's a fun story but it's wrong. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo
    - jcranmer 10y ago
      It's also worth pointing out that the vowel sound of "oo" was basically the first vowel to shift in the Great Vowel Shift. So the spelling "doodoo" would have had its modern pronunciation as far back as the first claimed mention (an unsubstantiated claim in 1630s that the Portuguese found it in 1507), let alone when it was first credibly discovered (by the Dutch in 1598) or first mentioned in English (1628). Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia page also suggests that the birds weren't found to be particularly appetizing.
    - nilved 10y ago
      I think it was a joke.
      - cjensen 10y ago
        Perhaps... to cover my rear-end, I intentionally avoided assuming an intent and worded my post to comment only on the story itself.
dalbasal 10y ago
I guess this is a little tangental, but I've always liked these artist’s renderings.
- MrJagil 10y ago
  Hand-drawn flora and fauna illustrations are definitely not appreciated enough these days! One of my favourites is John Lewin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewin And though most people are probably familiar, the Voynich Manuscript is also very beautiful.
  - brassic 10y ago
    And of course Kunstformen der Natur [1]. Even if Haeckel did cheat a bit. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur
    - MrJagil 10y ago
      Wonderful!
cjensen 10y ago
I assumed beak evolution was a flight adaptation to reduce weight. Teeth+jaws enable chewing which is much more effective at extracting energy and nutrients from food. Birds have a lot of weight adaptations. Digestion is quick-and-dirty in order to minimize the time food must be carried around during digestion. Legs are generally very thin and break easily (one leg broken is very common) in order to save weight. Even feathers participate -- most of the surface area of the wing is constructed from feathers rather than flesh in order to save weight. A Moa, for example, is similar-sized but has no teeth because it evolved from lighter birds. Why would a large dinosaur evolve a beak and lose the efficiency of teeth?
- wbhart 10y ago
  Here is an article [1] in the Mail Online which appears to give a possible explanation for beaks on dinosaurs. From the article, I can't quite figure out how they reached that conclusion. But it is at least a possible explanation. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2517009/Mystery-dinosaurs-beaks-solved-Hard-snouts-stopped-skulls-deforming-chewed-food.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2517009/Myste...
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Triceratops had a beak! It was for carving out pieces of fronds/palms etc. Bakker suggests that flowering plants invented beaked dinosaurs.
  - yareally 10y ago
    > "Bakker suggests that flowering plants invented beaked dinosaurs." I'd say it's quite possible that it's at least one of the factors. Hummingbirds became experts at reaching nectar in flowering plants and in turn, many flowers such as trumpet plants evolved down a path that invests heavily in hummingbirds visiting them. I have seen some clever orioles circumvent the process of nectar in exchange for pollen by snipping a hole in the bottom of a trumpet plant flower and drinking the nectar it wouldn't be able to reach otherwise.
- yareally 10y ago
benmcnelly 10y ago
Not paywalled: http://earthsky.org/earth/chinas-new-feathered-mud-dragon-dino http://earthsky.org/earth/chinas-new-feathered-mud-dragon-di...
goofasaurus_rex 10y ago
An artist’s rendering depicts the oviraptorosaur, flailing while mired in mud. So... uh... why is it... such a, um... why is this dinosaur so clumsy and tragic? Is it supposed to be the Napoleon Dynamite of dinosaurs?
marcosscriven 10y ago
Reminds me very much of the Cassowarys I saw in Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary
theamk 10y ago
Related comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dinosaurs http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dinosaurs what's next, eye-stalks?

94 points by MrJagil 10y ago

> "It was not a bird, but a dinosaur that was a close relative of birds." I know it would lead to confusion in the article, but birds are classified as dinosaurs. However, there are many groups of dinosaurs and each classified by their evolutionary traits. Birds just happen to be the only group that survived to the present day. If dinosaurs are a superset of many species, birds would be a subset of them. The interesting aspect is they found one that had evolved just enough to have a beak, but retained many of the characteristics of more primitive dinosaurs. Many dinosaurs not considered birds also had feathers, so that's not overly significant alone. That said, countries like New Zealand had birds that went down a pretty similar evolutionary path that lived up until 700 or so years ago[1]. New Zealand is a pretty interesting place evolution wise. It answers the question of how birds would evolve if not exposed to any other major mammalian predators for centuries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa

dogma1138 10y ago
Many dinosaurs also did not had feathers, some had scales, some had skin closet to mammals, and at least some were likeky warm blooded. Birds are only part of a single branch of the tree of dinosaurs, and currently it's more than likely that most dinosaurs did not had feathers and are not really related to birds in any particular manner.
- yareally 10y ago
  If you had citations for any of that, I would love to read it. Birds have been scientifically classified as dinosaurs for at least the past 20 or so years[1] and many (obviously not modern ones) lived in parallel to other dinosaur species in the late Cretaceous Period. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avialae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avialae
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    All birds are dinosaurs not all dinosaurs are birds, birds evolved from Theropods, there are other orders and suborders which were an evolutionary deadened and had nothing to do with birds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theropoda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theropoda
    - yareally 10y ago
      From my first comment: > "If dinosaurs are a superset of many species, birds would be a subset of them."
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        Birds are a subset of many species of dinosaurs but from one specific subgroup I wasn't contradicting you but some people think that all dinosaurs had feathers and are related to birds that is not the case. The feather thing was also known considerably earlier than people think as early as Darwin people published books about birds being related to some dinosaurs since we had very early feathered and winged fossils.
        yareally 10y ago
        Ah okay. Wasn't sure what you were leading to in your previous comments. I'm in agreement with you after your clarifications though :)
jonchang 10y ago
While we're clarifying nomenclature, I'd like to point out that "primitive" is to be avoided, as it may imply that a trait is simpler, inferior, or less adaptive, perpetuating the "ladder of progress" misconception of evolution. "Ancestral" is preferred and should always be applied to traits rather than taxa, e.g., "Tongtianlong limosus retained many ancestral characteristics of older dinosaurs"
- yareally 10y ago
  Good point. I didn't think about that aspect. I'm only an amateur biologist, so didn't consider the wording. Ironically, I would consider a beak more primitive until the engineer in me screams teeth could be a sign of over engineering--not that I would personally give up my good (but high maintenance) teeth for a beak. Could probably write a entire book on "evolutionarily traits and trends for engineers."
  - jonchang 10y ago
    Absolutely-it's important to consider the selective environment that a trait evolved in and evaluate all possible tradeoffs. You can see this in certain fishes where pharyngeal jaws permit eating hard prey (new food source!) but also increase the processing time for soft prey (bad if you're competing against critters that eat faster). Beaks are good for some reasons and teeth for others.
  - avip 10y ago
    You may enjoy "principles of animal locomotion" - it's pretty engineering focused.
vilhelm_s 10y ago
Sure, but that does not contradict the statement in the article, right? Some dinosaurs are birds, but this one was not.
- yareally 10y ago
  Correct, but the language throughout article would likely lead a reader to assume birds are not part of the dinosaur family, since it's never implied that birds are dinosaurs either. Pesky implicits can be a pain in more than just programming sometimes.
  - vilhelm_s 10y ago
    It does state "Oviraptorosaurs are not direct ancestors of birds, but share a common theropod dinosaur ancestor with the lineage that later evolved to birds."
questionr 10y ago
I wonder how this resurrection project is coming along http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1113874-the-frightening-discovery-of-the-mount-owen-claw/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1113874-the-frightening-disc... Also, would anyone have any good theories as to why dinosaurs evolved feathers? and from what did it evolve from? was it hair?
- yareally 10y ago
  I believe feathers evolved from scales. I think they were first beneficial for dinosaurs for their likely elaborate courtship/mating rituals if birds are any indicator of how other dinosaurs found mates. Early feathers weren't useful for flying, keeping warm or making a creature look bigger, so I would figure the advantage that made them useful was related to mating.
notadoc 10y ago
The moa foot just looks like what you'd imagine a dinosaur foot to look like, doesn't it? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Moa_foot.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Moa_foot...

mfoy_ 10y ago

> Tongtianlong limosus — the name means “muddy dragon on the road to heaven” Did they name it after how they discovered it died? Ha. Imagine if species were given posthumous names based on how they were wiped out... Would Dodos would be "Eaten by sailors on a lonely island"?

harveywi 10y ago
> Would Dodos would be "Eaten by sailors on a lonely island"? That is precisely where the name came from; i.e. the accretions left behind by satiated sailors after feasting on the endangered birds. The Great Vowel Shift hides its etymological roots.
- cjensen 10y ago
  The vowel shift[1] finished around the time the Dodo was discovered[2], so that's a fun story but it's wrong. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    It's also worth pointing out that the vowel sound of "oo" was basically the first vowel to shift in the Great Vowel Shift. So the spelling "doodoo" would have had its modern pronunciation as far back as the first claimed mention (an unsubstantiated claim in 1630s that the Portuguese found it in 1507), let alone when it was first credibly discovered (by the Dutch in 1598) or first mentioned in English (1628). Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia page also suggests that the birds weren't found to be particularly appetizing.
  - nilved 10y ago
    I think it was a joke.
    - cjensen 10y ago
      Perhaps... to cover my rear-end, I intentionally avoided assuming an intent and worded my post to comment only on the story itself.

dalbasal 10y ago

I guess this is a little tangental, but I've always liked these artist’s renderings.

MrJagil 10y ago
Hand-drawn flora and fauna illustrations are definitely not appreciated enough these days! One of my favourites is John Lewin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewin And though most people are probably familiar, the Voynich Manuscript is also very beautiful.
- brassic 10y ago
  And of course Kunstformen der Natur [1]. Even if Haeckel did cheat a bit. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur
  - MrJagil 10y ago
    Wonderful!

cjensen 10y ago

I assumed beak evolution was a flight adaptation to reduce weight. Teeth+jaws enable chewing which is much more effective at extracting energy and nutrients from food. Birds have a lot of weight adaptations. Digestion is quick-and-dirty in order to minimize the time food must be carried around during digestion. Legs are generally very thin and break easily (one leg broken is very common) in order to save weight. Even feathers participate -- most of the surface area of the wing is constructed from feathers rather than flesh in order to save weight. A Moa, for example, is similar-sized but has no teeth because it evolved from lighter birds. Why would a large dinosaur evolve a beak and lose the efficiency of teeth?

wbhart 10y ago
Here is an article [1] in the Mail Online which appears to give a possible explanation for beaks on dinosaurs. From the article, I can't quite figure out how they reached that conclusion. But it is at least a possible explanation. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2517009/Mystery-dinosaurs-beaks-solved-Hard-snouts-stopped-skulls-deforming-chewed-food.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2517009/Myste...
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Triceratops had a beak! It was for carving out pieces of fronds/palms etc. Bakker suggests that flowering plants invented beaked dinosaurs.
- yareally 10y ago
  > "Bakker suggests that flowering plants invented beaked dinosaurs." I'd say it's quite possible that it's at least one of the factors. Hummingbirds became experts at reaching nectar in flowering plants and in turn, many flowers such as trumpet plants evolved down a path that invests heavily in hummingbirds visiting them. I have seen some clever orioles circumvent the process of nectar in exchange for pollen by snipping a hole in the bottom of a trumpet plant flower and drinking the nectar it wouldn't be able to reach otherwise.
yareally 10y ago

benmcnelly 10y ago

Not paywalled: http://earthsky.org/earth/chinas-new-feathered-mud-dragon-dino http://earthsky.org/earth/chinas-new-feathered-mud-dragon-di...

goofasaurus_rex 10y ago

An artist’s rendering depicts the oviraptorosaur, flailing while mired in mud. So... uh... why is it... such a, um... why is this dinosaur so clumsy and tragic? Is it supposed to be the Napoleon Dynamite of dinosaurs?

marcosscriven 10y ago

Reminds me very much of the Cassowarys I saw in Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary

theamk 10y ago

Related comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dinosaurs http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dinosaurs what's next, eye-stalks?