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Ok I'm confused, I thought consensus nowadays was that dinosaurs had feathers, yet the impressions here are both leathery? What's our current best guess? Also,
by stavros 1y ago
Ok I'm confused, I thought consensus nowadays was that dinosaurs had feathers, yet the impressions here are both leathery? What's our current best guess? Also, what animal has a leathery covering like that, rather than scales or supple skin?
- apt-apt-apt-apt 1y agoLeathery makes more sense than feathers– imagine how much body heat you'd generate if you were 15K lbs (t-rex). You'd want to get rid of as much heat as possible, rather than putting on a thick sweater, or you'd overheat and die.
- mark-r 1y agoYes. An Elephant would make a good example.
- ufo 1y agoIt depends of the dinosaur. Large ones, like t.rex, had fewer feathers.
- mr_toad 1y agoThat’s the theory. However they estimate that Khankhuuluu would have weighed about 750kg, a lot less than a Tyrannosaur.
- tmtvl 1y agoThe same thing can be seen in some modern dinosaurs, the ostrich is a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich
- rkuykendall-com 1y ago> Also, what animal has a leathery covering like that, rather than scales or supple skin? Elephants! Which is apparently our closest approximation of Sauropod skin, which we actually have fossil impressions of. I went down the same rabbit hole as you for the same reason, more Dinosaurs had more feathers than we originally thought, but not all. For example, the theropods out your window have lots of feathers, so other theropods like T-Rex and Raptors might have as well, though the bigger theropods probably had fewer than the smaller ones.