RE: Phil Currie celebration, tyrant skin, and other things

["Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@home.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of Tim
Williams
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 12:40 PM
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: RE: Phil Currie celebration, tyrant skin, and other things


Tracy Ford wrote:

>    Something that needs to be considered is grooming. If they have
>feathers they also have to be able to groom and clean them. Tyrannosaurs
>couldn't reach around and clean itself.


Here's the way I see it.  The feathers of tyrannosaurs (if they had them)
would probably be very simple structures, more like hair or down than the
flight feathers of modern birds.  I'm not saying that only flying birds take
assidious care of their plumage.  But if the feathers of tyrannosaurs were
simple filamentous structures, and present only on certain parts of the body
(say, on the postorbital, or nape of the neck), then they may not have
needed grooming.  A roll in the mud or stream may have sufficed.<<

Still, they need to be cleaned. Parasites could easily attach themselves to
the 'barbs' in the feathers.

>>The bristles of elephants and hippopotamids come to mind when I think of
feathers and tyrannosaurids.  The ancestors of elephants and hippos were at
one stage quite small and fuzzy (if you go back far enough).  Their present
near-nakedness is undoubtedly secondary and size-related.<<

Yes, they do have bristles, but they do clean themselves. Elephants take
dirt baths and hippos go in the water. But that's isn't the only way they
'clean' themselves (or keep cool). There is also birds that clean them. I
know the list has on occasion have asked if some pterosaurs could have done
this or even birds. Maybe, who knows. But either way, what ever covering
they had, be it scales or harder to clean 'feather' like plumage somewhere
on their body, they still would have to keep it groomed.


Tracy L. Ford
P. O. Box 1171
Poway Ca  92074