Re: Feathering proof

[Gwangi]

Very good, got it. So my inference would be then that other feathered dromeosaurs would all be at least as basal or more so then velociraptor?Is there a method of placing them in order of  most basal to least and if so done..then would velociraptor be closer to the front of this group or the more basal end?

Took this off Wikipedia.


So we really only do have direct feather impressions for the Microraptorinae sub-family. However, quill knobs exist for Velociraptor as well as Rahonavis which are in separate sub-families from Microraptor and its kin. In considering basel dromaeosaurs we do have to consider troodontids as well. Anchiornis while also preserving feathers was also once classified a troodontid (the sister group to dromaeosaurs) and shares many characteristics with both groups. It is of Jurassic age. Jinfengopteryx is also a feathered troodontid. The fact that both sister groups (Troodontids and Dromaesaurs) both have feathered members indicates that it was not something independently evolved in a particular group of dromaeosaurs. Nor is there any indication that any group of dromaeosaurs lost their feathers.

But really it shouldn't matter which member is most basel as the group itself is nestled within another group of feathered animals and rests within yet another group of known feathered animals etc. etc. The evidence is clear even without direct feather impressions.

-Velociraptor and Rahonavis both preserve quill knobs.
-Microraptor and its kin preserve direct impressions of feathers.
-All three of these animals belong to different groups on the dromaeosaur tree.
-Dromaeosaurs are closely related to troodontids which also preserve feathers in its members.
-Both these groups represent one branch of a family tree for which feather evidence exists for every other group (Coelurosaurs).
-Dromaeosaurs and Troodontids are the closest relatives of modern birds. Like I said before, you really cannot get that much closer without being a bird yourself.

[stargatedalek]

So it's possible to have stegosaurs with, um, huge things. But bald dromeosaurs is not likely?

Ya, that has so many flaws

thats not even one flaw, let alone how somehow a single point could have "so many flaws"

sure there were a few elements from the book bordering on fringe science
but "that" is not something that we have any sort of preserved evidence for, there is quite honestly no way of knowing if that would be an accurate depiction, yet we DO have evidence of feathers in dromaeosaurs and their relatives, and even though the evidence on velociraptor may be minimal, there is no evidence to support it not being as feathered as its relatives, so therefore its the most likely scenario, and the one regarded as "most accurate"

[Ultimatedinoking]

So it's possible to have stegosaurs with, um, huge things. But bald dromeosaurs is not likely?

Ya, that has so many flaws

thats not even one flaw, let alone how somehow a single point could have "so many flaws"

sure there were a few elements from the book bordering on fringe science
but "that" is not something that we have any sort of preserved evidence for, there is quite honestly no way of knowing if that would be an accurate depiction, yet we DO have evidence of feathers in dromaeosaurs and their relatives, and even though the evidence on velociraptor may be minimal, there is no evidence to support it not being as feathered as its relatives, so therefore its the most likely scenario, and the one regarded as "most accurate"

Just because some dromeosaurs had feathers, doesn't mean they all did. The hot Mongolian desert could have pushed for a reduction or loss of body coverings to reduce heat related stresses. Or on the open "plains" of a region, fewer feathers would help in streamlining a dromeosaur for speeding after it's prey. (Don't tell me the "most accurate" view is that dromeosaurs DIDNT run.)

[Newt]

Dromaeosaur-sized mammals and birds in today's deserts are all fully coated. Remember, insulation works both ways- it can help an animal keep cool as well as warm. Just look at the insulating clothes worn by modern inhabitants of the world's hottest deserts, in northern Africa and southwestern Asia.

[Gwangi]

So it's possible to have stegosaurs with, um, huge things. But bald dromeosaurs is not likely?

Ya, that has so many flaws

thats not even one flaw, let alone how somehow a single point could have "so many flaws"

sure there were a few elements from the book bordering on fringe science
but "that" is not something that we have any sort of preserved evidence for, there is quite honestly no way of knowing if that would be an accurate depiction, yet we DO have evidence of feathers in dromaeosaurs and their relatives, and even though the evidence on velociraptor may be minimal, there is no evidence to support it not being as feathered as its relatives, so therefore its the most likely scenario, and the one regarded as "most accurate"

Just because some dromeosaurs had feathers, doesn't mean they all did. The hot Mongolian desert could have pushed for a reduction or loss of body coverings to reduce heat related stresses. Or on the open "plains" of a region, fewer feathers would help in streamlining a dromeosaur for speeding after it's prey. (Don't tell me the "most accurate" view is that dromeosaurs DIDNT run.)

Maybe this and maybe that, still no evidence. And that is the lamest argument I've read here in a long time. Heck, the ostrich can run at 40 mph, is the worlds largest living dinosaur AND lives in the desert...with feathers! You really are just a fanboy with no interest in REAL dinosaurs aren't you? I'm sorry if I'm losing my patience with you but this stubborn ignorance will not help you with your argument.

[Ultimatedinoking]

Dromaeosaur-sized mammals and birds in today's deserts are all fully coated. Remember, insulation works both ways- it can help an animal keep cool as well as warm. Just look at the insulating clothes worn by modern inhabitants of the world's hottest deserts, in northern Africa and southwestern Asia.

Many small mammals of dry regions have large ears to radiate heat, or spend the day in holes, only coming out at night. The only dry region living animals of dromeosaur size that I can think of are pronghorn, vultures, camels, and coyotes.

[Ultimatedinoking]

So it's possible to have stegosaurs with, um, huge things. But bald dromeosaurs is not likely?

Ya, that has so many flaws

thats not even one flaw, let alone how somehow a single point could have "so many flaws"

sure there were a few elements from the book bordering on fringe science
but "that" is not something that we have any sort of preserved evidence for, there is quite honestly no way of knowing if that would be an accurate depiction, yet we DO have evidence of feathers in dromaeosaurs and their relatives, and even though the evidence on velociraptor may be minimal, there is no evidence to support it not being as feathered as its relatives, so therefore its the most likely scenario, and the one regarded as "most accurate"

Just because some dromeosaurs had feathers, doesn't mean they all did. The hot Mongolian desert could have pushed for a reduction or loss of body coverings to reduce heat related stresses. Or on the open "plains" of a region, fewer feathers would help in streamlining a dromeosaur for speeding after it's prey. (Don't tell me the "most accurate" view is that dromeosaurs DIDNT run.)

Maybe this and maybe that, still no evidence. And that is the lamest argument I've read here in a long time. Heck, the ostrich can run at 40 mph, is the worlds largest living dinosaur AND lives in the desert...with feathers! You really are just a fanboy with no interest in REAL dinosaurs aren't you?

...with bare legs and neck. Not fully coated as the feather fans keep saying theropods were.

[stargatedalek]

Many small mammals of dry regions have large ears to radiate heat, or spend the day in holes, only coming out at night. The only dry region living animals of dromeosaur size that I can think of are pronghorn, vultures, camels, and coyotes.

please give me this evidence dromaeosaurs were not nocturnal
feathers don't work like fur, they are even better for cooling down

...with bare legs and neck. Not fully coated as the feather fans keep saying theropods were.

emus have feathered necks, and they live in deserts and run, plus unlike ostriches they are often running down prey not unlike dromaeosaurs likely would have
and you did not describe a "bare legs/neck" velociraptor, you said "completely bare except for the wings"

[Gwangi]

So it's possible to have stegosaurs with, um, huge things. But bald dromeosaurs is not likely?

Ya, that has so many flaws

thats not even one flaw, let alone how somehow a single point could have "so many flaws"

sure there were a few elements from the book bordering on fringe science
but "that" is not something that we have any sort of preserved evidence for, there is quite honestly no way of knowing if that would be an accurate depiction, yet we DO have evidence of feathers in dromaeosaurs and their relatives, and even though the evidence on velociraptor may be minimal, there is no evidence to support it not being as feathered as its relatives, so therefore its the most likely scenario, and the one regarded as "most accurate"

Just because some dromeosaurs had feathers, doesn't mean they all did. The hot Mongolian desert could have pushed for a reduction or loss of body coverings to reduce heat related stresses. Or on the open "plains" of a region, fewer feathers would help in streamlining a dromeosaur for speeding after it's prey. (Don't tell me the "most accurate" view is that dromeosaurs DIDNT run.)

Maybe this and maybe that, still no evidence. And that is the lamest argument I've read here in a long time. Heck, the ostrich can run at 40 mph, is the worlds largest living dinosaur AND lives in the desert...with feathers! You really are just a fanboy with no interest in REAL dinosaurs aren't you?

...with bare legs and neck. Not fully coated as the feather fans keep saying theropods were.

So what. They're still feathered. A far cry from your naked dromaeosaurs or scaly theropods. How about emu? Roadrunners? Rhea? The point is, there is no featherless bird, regardless of where it lives. Feathers protect animals from both heat and cold and do you know how cold deserts get at night?

This is not about being a "feather fan" this is about evidence verses non-sense. I'm not a "feather fan", I go where the evidence leads me. I love dinosaurs regardless, not just a preconceived notion of them ingrained by pop culture.

[Trisdino]

Velociraptor size:



Ostrich size:




Even if we follow the stupid "small animals had more feathers" argument, your logic still does not hold up.

[Ultimatedinoking]

First off, stop calling me a pop culture follower or a jp fanboy.

Second, wether or not we're talking about velociraptor or tyrannosaurus or allosaurus or carnotaurus or oviraptor or that Chinese yutyrannus, you have to understand that just because glorified dinosaurs are all that remains of the theropods, they weren't identical. Theropods would have had life histories, body masses, lifestyles, and breeding behavior (and anatomical differences) that was far from that of glorified dinosaurs. There was mononycus, which might have moved like a roadrunner, but fed like an anteater. At the other end of the scale, there was Tyrannosaurus, with the strongest jaws of all time. Glorified dinosaurs are not theropods in the same since that whales are not ungulates. They have both had time to change from their ancestors. Yet do orcas moo? No, would tyrannosaurus chirp, no.

[Trisdino]

Look at fur.

How many mammals do not have fur? Almost none. Yeah, marine mammals don't, but even elephants have a bit of fur here and there.

Look at feathers.

How many birds do not have feathers? None. Yeah, ostriches and such do not have them everywhere, but even they have large coverings on most of their bodies.

Look at scales.

How many dinosaurs have only scales, and no evidence for any form of integument, even if it is just by way of phylogenetic bracketing? None, all dinosaurs may have had fuzz, and the odds of some, like maniraptorans, being almost fully scaly, is just ridiculous, you may as well be proposing a hypothetical miocene unicorn that fed on megatherium tears for sustenance.

[Ultimatedinoking]

Look at fur.

How many mammals do not have fur? Almost none. Yeah, marine mammals don't, but even elephants have a bit of fur here and there.

Look at feathers.

How many birds do not have feathers? None. Yeah, ostriches and such do not have them everywhere, but even they have large coverings on most of their bodies.

Look at scales.

How many dinosaurs have only scales, and no evidence for any form of integument, even if it is just by way of phylogenetic bracketing? None, all dinosaurs may have had fuzz, and the odds of some, like maniraptorans, being almost fully scaly, is just ridiculous, you may as well be proposing a hypothetical miocene unicorn that fed on megatherium tears for sustenance.

It's very unlikely stegosaurs and sauropods would be feathered, no matter how small the amount.

[Trisdino]

Why?

[Ultimatedinoking]

Why?

Because they are too distantly related to glorified dinosaurs to have them.

[Trisdino]

What the hell does "glorified dinosaur" even bloody mean?


There is plenty of evidence that fuzz was basal to dinosaurs, from the triassic individuals with fuzz, to the quills on several species of ornithischians, to the pycnofibres on pterosaurs, and feather creating genes in pseudosuchians, you are just making this crap up at this point. Why are they to distantly related? Where is the arbitrary barrier that blocks it? Sauropods are very closely related to theropods, to the point where early sauropods are almost impossible to distinguish from their predatory cousins, and fuzz has been found on both other lineages. Again, here comes phylogenetic bracketing, the nasty evil villain who I am sad to say, cares not much for your fanboism and nostalgia, science has moved on, so please, catch up or stop trying, I am tired of hearing your exhausted huffing and puffing, it is rather loud.

[Gwangi]

First off, stop calling me a pop culture follower or a jp fanboy.

Second, wether or not we're talking about velociraptor or tyrannosaurus or allosaurus or carnotaurus or oviraptor or that Chinese yutyrannus, you have to understand that just because glorified dinosaurs are all that remains of the theropods, they weren't identical. Theropods would have had life histories, body masses, lifestyles, and breeding behavior (and anatomical differences) that was far from that of glorified dinosaurs. There was mononycus, which might have moved like a roadrunner, but fed like an anteater. At the other end of the scale, there was Tyrannosaurus, with the strongest jaws of all time. Glorified dinosaurs are not theropods in the same since that whales are not ungulates. They have both had time to change from their ancestors. Yet do orcas moo? No, would tyrannosaurus chirp, no.

What you fail to understand is that there are different levels of "birdness" where theropods are concerned. You're placing birds in column "A" and all other theropods in column "B" when in reality there is no real distinction between them except that birds are still alive and can fly. You think Velociraptor is a theropod like Tyrannosaurus, Carnotaurus or Allosaurus when it reality it is an animal FAR MORE closely related to birds than any of those other theropods and yes, still a theropod. But birds are theropods too. And yet you want to dismiss its bird-like qualities because "its a theropod, not a bird". The same is true for Tyrannosaurus, it is FAR MORE bird-like than Carnotaurus and is in fact more bird-like than Carnotaurus-like.

I am fully aware that modern birds were not identical to theropods, that is a silly assumption to make. Birds are not even identical to each other. You have hummingbirds and penguins and ostriches and eagles and all manner of birds with unique characteristics and behaviors. But at their core they are still dinosaurs and serve as the only window into what dinosaur behavior was like. The traits birds carry, they inherited from theropod dinosaurs. And indeed, many aspects of bird behavior have been preserved with other dinosaurs as well. Egg brooding, sleep posture, social lives, sexual display...all these and more evolved first in dinosaurs and are still be used in birds. You cannot observe the behavior of extinct animals and for generations many people believed dinosaurs were gone completely, that we would never see one or know what they were like. And then we found out there are 10,000 species of them in our backyards. Now we can see dinosaurs in action. And yes they are specialized, and yes they are unique but they are still dinosaurs and a lot of extinct dinosaurs were very much like modern birds. Velociraptor was for all intensive purposes...a bird. It had far more in common anatomically and probably behaviorally than it did with Allosaurus or Apatosaurus or Stegosaurus. But Allosaurus had more in common with birds than it did with Stegosaurus. The fossil record is not perfect, you get what you get. You use science to fill in the rest. If you want to understand dinosaur behavior you have to accept that birds are dinosaurs and actually go out and watch them.

[Ultimatedinoking]

What the hell does "glorified dinosaur" even bloody mean?


There is plenty of evidence that fuzz was basal to dinosaurs, from the triassic individuals with fuzz, to the quills on several species of ornithischians, to the pycnofibres on pterosaurs, and feather creating genes in pseudosuchians, you are just making this crap up at this point. Why are they to distantly related? Where is the arbitrary barrier that blocks it? Sauropods are very closely related to theropods, to the point where early sauropods are almost impossible to distinguish from their predatory cousins, and fuzz has been found on both other lineages. Again, here comes phylogenetic bracketing, the nasty evil villain who I am sad to say, cares not much for your fanboism and nostalgia, science has moved on, so please, catch up or stop trying, I am tired of hearing your exhausted huffing and puffing, it is rather loud.

It means bird.  When did we get pseudosuchian genes?  And for the last time, it's not fanboism!

[Ultimatedinoking]

First off, stop calling me a pop culture follower or a jp fanboy.

Second, wether or not we're talking about velociraptor or tyrannosaurus or allosaurus or carnotaurus or oviraptor or that Chinese yutyrannus, you have to understand that just because glorified dinosaurs are all that remains of the theropods, they weren't identical. Theropods would have had life histories, body masses, lifestyles, and breeding behavior (and anatomical differences) that was far from that of glorified dinosaurs. There was mononycus, which might have moved like a roadrunner, but fed like an anteater. At the other end of the scale, there was Tyrannosaurus, with the strongest jaws of all time. Glorified dinosaurs are not theropods in the same since that whales are not ungulates. They have both had time to change from their ancestors. Yet do orcas moo? No, would tyrannosaurus chirp, no.

What you fail to understand is that there are different levels of "birdness" where theropods are concerned. You're placing birds in column "A" and all other theropods in column "B" when in reality there is no real distinction between them except that birds are still alive and can fly. You think Velociraptor is a theropod like Tyrannosaurus, Carnotaurus or Allosaurus when it reality it is an animal FAR MORE closely related to birds than any of those other theropods and yes, still a theropod. But birds are theropods too. And yet you want to dismiss its bird-like qualities because "its a theropod, not a bird". The same is true for Tyrannosaurus, it is FAR MORE bird-like than Carnotaurus and is in fact more bird-like than Carnotaurus-like.

I am fully aware that modern birds were not identical to theropods, that is a silly assumption to make. Birds are not even identical to each other. You have hummingbirds and penguins and ostriches and eagles and all manner of birds with unique characteristics and behaviors. But at their core they are still dinosaurs and serve as the only window into what dinosaur behavior was like. The traits birds carry, they inherited from theropod dinosaurs. And indeed, many aspects of bird behavior have been preserved with other dinosaurs as well. Egg brooding, sleep posture, social lives, sexual display...all these and more evolved first in dinosaurs and are still be used in birds. You cannot observe the behavior of extinct animals and for generations many people believed dinosaurs were gone completely, that we would never see one or know what they were like. And then we found out there are 10,000 species of them in our backyards. Now we can see dinosaurs in action. And yes they are specialized, and yes they are unique but they are still dinosaurs and a lot of extinct dinosaurs were very much like modern birds. Velociraptor was for all intensive purposes...a bird. It had far more in common anatomically and probably behaviorally than it did with Allosaurus or Apatosaurus or Stegosaurus. But Allosaurus had more in common with birds than it did with Stegosaurus. The fossil record is not perfect, you get what you get. You use science to fill in the rest. If you want to understand dinosaur behavior you have to accept that birds are dinosaurs and actually go out and watch them.

If you went out to Nevada and looked at lizards, would it tell you about snakes?

[Gwangi]

Why?

Because they are too distantly related to glorified dinosaurs to have them.

How do you know that?

Look around at the mammals living on Earth today. Shrews, bats, elephants, horses, lions, humans, rabbits, deer, wolves, sea lions. They all have hair to some degree. In some it is thick and shaggy, in others sparse. Is it really so hard for you to believe the same could have been true for dinosauria? That feathers are to dinosaurs what hair is to mammals? The only reason you oppose it is because it conflicts with your imagined image of what a dinosaur should be. Now I'm not saying I think sauropods and stegosaurs had feathers. We need more evidence. But as time goes on the likelihood that they may have has only increased. We don't have enough evidence to say one way or the other at this point and to take a stance on it like you're doing completely goes against what science is all about. Science is about following the evidence wherever it may go, not about picking and choosing what ideas you like.