Re: did Jurassic dinosaurs have feathers?

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

On Jan 7, 2008 9:00 AM, Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com> wrote:
>
> WHat's our reason for being confident that Allosaurus didn't have
> feathers?  My understanding is that we have some preserved tyrannosaur
> skin impressions that show scales and no feathers, but that this is
> not taken as evidence that tyrannosaurs were not feathered -- only
> that they had scales but that these could have been as well as, rather
> than instead of, feathers.  What's to stop the same being true of
> Allosaurus or Ceratosaurus, or for that matter Brachiosaurus or
> Triceratops?


Well, for _Allosaurus_, nothing, AFAIK. For the rest, there's the fact
that there are full-body impressions of _Carnotaurus_ which show
nothing but scales.

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T. Michael Keesey
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