Tyrannosaurus’ integument now

[Concavenator]

Hello,

I was just wondering why  many depictions of Tyrannosaurus that I've seen lately represent it as scaly ( or at least, far less feathered than what it was suggested to be some years ago).

In fact, like I said some years ago , it was at least accepted that Tyrannosaurus had plumage over its body, but now it's very frequent to see bald or scarcely feathered versions.

Why is it, that even Saurian and CollectA updated their respective T.rex designs in order to represent this scalier version? Has new remains of T.rex skin been found?

Also, I doubt that some people who do these representations are against scientifically accurate dinosaurs; the anatomy in these representations is very fine, and they're not the kind of people that on its day rejected the idea of feathered dromaeosaurs or the new look for Spinosaurus, for example.

To put an example, David Krentz has recently revealed an unbelievable bald Tyrannosaurus.

[Loon]

I'm not an expert on this, but I believe that this was thanks to a study that came out a year or two ago that showed scales where there were supposed to be feathers based on other tyrannosaurs. And now, it seems to me, that the discrepancies between reconstructions are dependent on the artist's belief in terms of the ability for feathers to grow on scales. This is a hot topic, that usually gets pretty nasty, so, if I'm wrong at all, please someone let me know.

[oscars_dinos]

There's been new studies that show a scally t rex is more plausible then a partially feathered one, even as babies

[Rain]

A paper discussing a few skin impressions found was published a year or two ago, this article by Mark Witton surmises everything pretty well.

http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2017/06/revenge-of-scaly-tyrannosaurus.html

[suspsy]

Okay, I'm going to quote something that Matt Martyniuk recently wrote on Facebook during a discussion on Creative Beast's page regarding Tyrannosaurus rex integument.

In science, the jury is permanently out. We need to consider the weight of the evidence. At the moment, the evidence favours majority scaly, if not fully scaly tyrannosaurids. But this is just based on statistical probability with very limited data. It is not a "fact" that needs to be overturned or not. That's not how science works. Scaly tyrannosaurids are currently the most parsimonious interpretation, but that does not make other interpretations "wrong," just less likely. Pop sci articles sensationalize the issue by making it seem like every new paper has overturned a paradigm. This is just click bait. The primary sources are appropriately cautious and more equivocal in their discussions.

One other thing worth mentioning is that anybody who thinks they know the life appearance of tyrannosaurids is wrong. And the job of good paleoart is not to portray the most statistically likely possible life appearance. Good paleoart should illustrate lots of potential within those error bars. It's more likely that tyrannosaurids were mostly scaly based on the very limited samples we have, but that should in no way bind people to reconstruct them that way. We need a variety of depictions to help illustrate the uncertainty and the possibilities. Having reconstructions be homogenous gives the false impression that we know more than we do.

Thomas Holtz also has a good quote on this topic:

100% of paleoart is wrong; it's simply a matter of to what degree.

Bottom line: the matter of T. rex integument remains this: ?

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

The way I see it based on what we know is that T. rex was mostly scaly but had some feathers. I would imagine tyrannosaurus had feathers to the same degree that humans or elephants have hair, where it's sparse on the body perhaps with some thicker areas. Maybe they had tiny wings or something.

[Loon]

The way I see it based on what we know is that T. rex was mostly scaly but had some feathers. I would imagine tyrannosaurus had feathers to the same degree that humans or elephants have hair, where it's sparse on the body perhaps with some thicker areas. Maybe they had tiny wings or something.

I'm sure I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said already, but this is probably the most likely look. I've kind of grown found of a tyannosaurus with some little "hairs" here and there, though, I might be taking the elephant comparison too literally.

[ITdactyl]

Do we have examples of animals that lost ALL the soft integument of their near ancestors?  I don't know of any mammal that's absolutely hairless - except examples with a skin condition.  I'm aware that the case for mammals doesn't necessarily mean an equivalent case for dinosaurs.

Pardon the rantings of a non-expert enthusiast, but I can't reconcile the fact that fully feathered Jurassic tyrannosaurids produced fully scaled giant descendants in the Cretaceous.  Do we have any other example of a complete integument switch within the family level of taxonomy*?

*yes, I'm aware of the limitations of taxonomy

[HD-man]

I can't reconcile the fact that fully feathered Jurassic tyrannosaurids

You're thinking of non-tyrannosaurid tyrannosauroids. Only scales are known in tyrannosaurids.