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If you've ever heard or seen anything about dinosaurs lately, except for a certain popular movie franchise
Then by now you probably know that at least some dinosaurs had feathers
That's been an established scientific fact for a long time, nearly 20 years,
and we've had some idea that they've probably had feathers for much longer than that.
Palaeontologists are still trying to figure out exactly
what kinds of dinosaurs had feathers and what they looked like.
But at least one entire class of dinosaurs seems to have had them,
including Velociraptors and probably Tyrannosaurus Rex.
As early as the 1800s, experts in animal anatomy were noticing the similarity between dinosaurs and birds.
Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist who was one of the earliest advocates for evolution
pointed out that the dinosaur Compsognathus looked a lot like Archeopteryx,
which was at the time thought of as the first bird.
And part of why archaeopteryx was considered to be a bird was because
it was fossilized with unmistakable impression of feathers.
Feathers are made of protein, which tends to break down before it can fossilize.
That means that even dinosaurs that did have feathers aren't usually discovered with them intact.
But lately we've been turning up all kinds of feathery fossils
especially in China where the geology is just right for preserving feathers.
You can see the impressions of them preserved around the dinosaur or in an imprint of its skin
And over the past two decades paleontologists have been working on studying them.
The first feathered fossil to make a big impact was discovered in 1996.
It was of Sinosauropteryx, a type of dinosaur called a theropod
It was two-legged, carnivorous, and eventually
gave rise to birds. And the fossil clearly
had a halo of fluff around it.
The fluff was made of simple feathers
A bird's more complex flight feathers are rigid
and have a central spine called a vane.
But this fluff, which paleontologists for real call "Dinofuzz"
has a simpler structure. So Sinosauropteryx couldn't fly
Instead it probably used its feathers to attract mates, or to keep warm, or both
But even though we don't know exactly how Sinosauropteryx used its feathers,
we actually do know what color they were.
Sometimes, you can see the structure of fossilized feathers in a microscope
including the tiny structures responsible for color.
Colors like blue, or yellow don't last for millions of years, as far as we know.
But red and black do, because the cellular structures that hold
red and black pigments have distinctive shapes.
And in really good fossils, those shapes can be preserved.
Using electron microscopes, scientists can tell that
Archaeopteryx had black and white feathers
and that Sinosauropteryx had reddish and white stripes
Since Sinosauropteryx, there's been a never-ending parade of fluffy dinosaurs
Some of them have simple Dinofuzz, but others have feathers that
start to look a lot like the flight feathers of birds.
There have been so many, in fact, that it seems like
all theropod dinosaurs had some for of proto-feathery fluff
Even some dinosaurs unrelated to the theropods
had very simple protein fuzz, which could mean that the
common ancestor of all dinosaurs had it too
The theropod group includes two of pop-culture's favorites: Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex
Now I'm not here to burst anybody's bubble, or, you know, criticize any movie-makers, but
Velociraptors definitely had feathers
In the summer of 2015, paleontologists discovered a dinosaur very closely related to velociraptors
but better preserved than any velociraptor found so far
with big, wing-like feathers on its arms.
Because its so closely related to the Velociraptor, they imagine it was very similar.
They say it paints a picture of the Velociraptor as a fluffy, feathered poodle from Hell.
We've yet to find a Velociraptor fossil with its feathers intact
but between the presence of feathers on its relatives
and the points on its bones for feathers to attach, it almost certainly had them.
As for whether the T. Rex had feathers, it's a little less clear.
Some Tyrannosaurs earlier on the evolutionary tree definitely had Dinofuzz
But, the T. Rex has something in common with elephants and rhinos
It was huge. And even though the ancestors of elephants and rhinos had fur,
modern day versions don't have fur anymore, because
they're so big they don't need it to keep warm
That logic might also apply to something the size of T. Rex.
It could've lost the feathers its ancestors had, since it was so big it didn't need the fuzz to keep warm.
In fact, in 2012, scientists turned up a dinosaur called Yutyrannus
It was closely related to Tyrannosaurus,
was really big, and had simple feathers.
So, T Rex.might've had them too. But until we find a T. Rex with impressions of its skin, we can't be sure
But we definitely do have to change our picture of the dinosaur age to include some fluffy hell-poodles.
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