Friday, October 08, 2004

When pigs fly and dinosaurs have feathers...but wait!

NPR had a piece yesterday about this report, and today I came across it on Pejmanesque. Lest it fall through the cracks, I have to bring this piece of trivia to the attention of all who read here. They weren't modern feathers but "proto-feathers". I envision something like elongated scales which would make sense for a primordeal reptile. But "feathers" is sure to get more attention.

Ancestors of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex were clothed in delicate feathers, a fossil discovered in China suggests. The find may come as a surprise to people used to images of Tyrannosaurus as a scaly monster. But many palaeontologists have been predicting just such a find ever since the first evidence of a dinosaur with a feathery coat came from the same site in Liaoning in 1995. Link

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