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What is the Deal With Feathering on Tyrannosaurus rex?


Cloud the Dinosaur King

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What is the deal with the feathering on Tyrannosaurus rex? I can't really find anything reliable online, except for Mark Witton's blogpost about the topic, but some renowned paleoartists like Fabrizio de Rossi's recent "All Hail the Queen" artwork. So was T. rex fully scaly, did it have a few bristles on the back of the neck and on the trailing edge of the arms? I think that adults had some bristles while juveniles had much more feathering. What is the current theory?

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Check this post out ... but feathers are out...a couple of articles in there one is Wittons.  They are getting closer to what it looked like.

 

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The trouble with T. rex, like most other dinosaurs, is that we don't know that much about it's covering. But we do actually know more about the covering of T. rex than most other dinosaurs. Dinosaur mummies are very, very rare. Feathers, skin and scales are rarely preserved. When nothing is known about a covering of an animal, what can be a very useful tool to roughly figure out what it might have looked like, is phylogenetic bracketing. And luckily we do have a number of primitive Tyrannosauroids from China that have protofeathers preserved. Even the biggest animal known that has a feather covering is in Tyrannosauroidae. This is Yutyrannus, and it was mostly covered with short fuzz. At around 9 meters this also proves that big animals weren't necessarily bald. There were also some skin impressions from Gorgosaurus, a Tyrannosaurid fairly closely related to T. rex where the skin did not preserve any scales at all. This skin was removed in preparing the skeleton after briefly describing it. This skin without scales might suggest that Gorgosaurus could have some fuzz as well.

 

So all this could make us think that T. rex had protofeathers or dinofuzz as well. But the interesting part, is that recently there was a study that described a number of preserved skin patches of T. rex, all of which had small scales. It is important to note that these preserved parts of the skin are tiny pieces on a very large animal. There were pieces of skin from the tail, hips and neck. So we do know that T. rex did have small scales in those areas. So does this mean T. rex was completely covered in scales? We just do not know at this point, and can only speculate based on the available evidence.

 

Personally I think it's reasonable to assume that T. rex probably also had scales on other parts of the body that we do not know about. But it also seems reasonable to assume that T. rex may have had some protofeathers in various areas of the body or perhaps in certain stages of life. At this point it's entirely possible that T. rex chicks were completely fluffy and that they lost their fuzz at a later stage in life. It may have had some fuzz. It may have had some bristles for display. Or perhaps it may have had no feathers at all.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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6 hours ago, LordTrilobite said:

So all this could make us think that T. rex had protofeathers or dinofuzz as well.

 

He said, "dinofuzz"!!!  :dinothumb: :D

Don't know much about history

Don't know much biology

Don't know much about science books.........

Sam Cooke - (What A) Wonderful World

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2 minutes ago, LordTrilobite said:

Yes, that's the informal name of protofeathers.

I know, it just sounds cool!

Don't know much about history

Don't know much biology

Don't know much about science books.........

Sam Cooke - (What A) Wonderful World

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1 hour ago, SailingAlongToo said:

 

He said, "dinofuzz"!!!  :dinothumb: :D

 

This is why I love this forum.  We have seriousness and humor together. :hearty-laugh:

And Lord Trilobite thank you for your explanation of what we know about T. Rex.

 

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My advice is to include a slight covering of "dino fuzz", you can use other relatives of Tyrannosaurus to know where to put it. While early consensus had two camps of for feathers on the entire body or no feathers at all, as trilobite said its not so black and white. A nice combo of both camps gives us a more plausible and accurate reconstruction.   

rydysig.JPG

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Thank to everyone for your help, I was just really curious about the topic, and also I needed the information for some upcoming paleoart. :ptero:

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