Re: What is big, fluffy, and could tear you to shreds? Yutyrannus, the 9 m long feathered tyrannosauroid from China

[Tim Williams <tijawi@gmail.com>]

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. <tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:

> Yutyrannus is a good-sized dinosaur (9 m, 1.4 t). Manus has three large 
> clawed digits; pes is non-artcometatarsalian and limb
> proportions fall among basal (non-arctomet) theropod curve.
>
> Feathers are preserved in patches over most of the body. Individual elements 
> up to 20 cm long: remind me of emu or cassowary
> feathers.


_Yutyrannus_ seems to be the kind of large, feathered animal that
those giant fleas might have infested/parasitized (Huang et al., 2012;
doi:10.1038/nature10839)


> So how are the BANDits going to deal with this? Will they call them frauds or 
> collegen fibers, or is Tyrannosauroidea now part of
> birds?


My guess is that Feduccia &c (the BANDits = "Birds Are Not Dinosaurs"
advocates) will dismiss the filamentous plumage of _Yutyrannus_ as the
same kind of integumentary structures seen in "furry" pterosaurs
and/or _Tianyulong_ or _Psittacosaurus_, rather than feathers.  Of
course, the possibility that all these integumentary structures might
be homologous will be conveniently ignored...






Cheers

Tim