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We have enough fossils of "things that don't fossilize well" that if dinosaurs were feathered by default we'd know about it.
by throwaway0a5e 5y ago
We have enough fossils of "things that don't fossilize well" that if dinosaurs were feathered by default we'd know about it.
- handrous 5y agoLast I checked back in on my childhood obsession of paleontology, consensus was that a whole lot more theropods were at least partially feathered, at least at some life stages, than previously thought, including some of the big ones, but there's not evidence that many other categories of dinosaur were feathered.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoAFAIK that's still correct. The dinosaurs from which birds are descended are thought to have feathers or something similar, in some case or at some stages of life. But that's a really long way from being the default or even a sizeable enough majority that one could say "the dinosaurs had feathers" as a generalization and do so with a straight face.