Bob McLennan It can also be applied to so many other topics besides feathers too. Honestly, I believe that holding onto that prejudice is one of humanity's greatest problems.
I up this, this is why I hate discussing about anything feather related because no matter what side I'm on, even if I'm on neither, someone will lose their shit at me.
I love the feathered theory way more and, in fact, no one looks at an Eagle and says "This thing would look fierce as fuck without those stupid feathers". I think feathers would have served to make them look even MORE fierce. And, of course, amplifies the cuteness of the smaller, less scary ones.
My grandparents took me to Dinosaur Land a while back and upon seeing a bunch of dino bones my grandpa was like “well those look like bird bones to me idk what took paleontologist so long” my grandparents are the best.
It's not quite "Feather Resistance" that I hate, as it is the really obnoxious trend of people saying "Well we'll never see a REAL dinosaur, so we can all just make up whatever we want no matter how stupid or unrealistic!" It feels like an actual insult to the field of paleontology, considering the fact that the job of a paleontologist is to learn about how these animals lived and what they were like. When people say "well, we'll never know what a REAL dinosaur is like, so who cares about accuracy!" all I hear is "Paleontology is a useless static science that has never accomplished anything besides digging up some dusty old bones, so who cares what the 'experts' say! Fossils tell us nothing!" And they're wrong. There are so many things fossils can tell us, you just have to know what to look for. It's not just feather haters who say that either, it's also BANDits, ill-informed JP fanbrats, Creationists, etc.
I am so used to feathered raptors that the "scaly" versions of raptors don't look as real nor as cool as the feathered kind, it looks a bit like when you shave a bear or a cat, not a happy sight. Feathers give them more character and honestly makes them endlessly more terrifying. Feathered dinosaurs was one of the best paleontological discoveries ever in my opinion.
I agree, something about the feathers makes them feel more real, more alive. Probably because it feels a bit familiar. Seeing dinos without feathers, the most shocking imo is older depictions of scaly therizinosaurs, just look really alien and it's almost impossible for me to imagine them as living, breathing creatures. Adding the feathers just feels right.
"dont let your prejudices get in the way of you learning something." one of the best lines about education ever. I love your enthusiasm. It ramps up and you catch yourself and then a moment later it ramps up again. Its that passion that makes this channel great.
an episode I'd love to see is an episode on "shrinkwrapping" and the common process of restoring dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures by only considering the basic contour of its skeleton. there's so many renditions of skeletal, bony dinos that just feel plain wrong and I'd love to see your take on the shrinkwrap practice/how dinosaurs are potentially being misinterpreted.
This would be an amazing video. So many people when they think of dinosaurs, even when they think of the scientifically accurate ones, think of their faces skin wrapped. Even me. That would be great. STEVE DO THIS PLEASE :>
Until a few years ago, scientists forgot that dinosaurs would probably had cartilage between their spinal cord. You may be asking toooo much for them, at this point.
Feather resistance makes me so mad, because you don't look at an eagle or a swan and think it looks goofy or dumb or not scary. You look at an eagle and see a magnificent predator, and you look at a swan and see grace and elegance (and, of course, if you know anything about swans, a very real danger). Cassowaries look a bit silly, but everyone knows they will fuck you up at any given opportunity. You don't think less of birds because they had feathers, so you shouldn't think less of dinosaurs!
+Bewilderbeastie Honestly I don't think any bird looks cool or scary, I don't really like birds in general but I get your point. You can't say they did not have feathers when they obviously did. But it does get kinda silly when people start putting feathers on sauropods, hadrosaurs, ceratopsids, carnosaurs etc.
I don't know, I saw a stuffed giant moa at the Natural History museum and that was legitimately terrifying. I only came up to its chest and I'm 171cm tall. I can't imagine how scary that thing would have been in real life. Also, ostriches are quite worrying to encounter in real life. "Aw, man, just put feathers on everything!" * feathers cat *
This video completely changed how I look at dinosaurs. I'm not a Super Dinosaur Enthusiast, I just started watching this series because it's cool and I learn stuff; but that depiction of Anchiornis was the first time I really, truly understood and processed that all of these were actual real animals that existed on this planet. As a kid, I kind of mentally categorized dinosaurs as fantasy creatures without realizing it; I knew they were real and fascinating, but I mean, I also had encyclopedia-style fiction books on the biology of dragons, so I think somewhere deep down I had put dinosaurs away in that corner of my mind, as being plausible cool creatures of myth. Seeing that dinosaur, its actual colors and feathers, and realizing Oh That's Just A Bird Actually, somehow made it inmediately clear that dinosaurs, all of them, were once very real and tangible animals, as common as the birds and cats I see every day. It inmediately made me a hundred times more invested in paleontology and how fascinating it is to find out more about these animals
Should've shown some cassowaries and their feathers. Their feathers are very simple compared to most birds' contour feathers. And if you want a bird that looks like a dinosaur (complete with giant talons on the feet) the cassowary certainly fits.
SAI Peregrinus I avoided referencing cassowaries for this episode because there was a spell where practically _all_ fuzzy/fluffy coelurosaurs got restored with unkempt cassowary-style feathers--which _is_ sometimes accurate, but more often is . . . overly hair-metal-looking. I'm glad that phase is over, is what I'm getting at. You're right on about those feet of theirs, though. Also, their head crests are a pretty dramatic example of cranial ontogeny in a living dinosaur.
I find feathers exciting. I was an early "believer" that fully developed feathers evolved before flight. My opinion was that they originally evolved their complexity for display purposes, and I still take the view that the first "flights" were actually the ability to, um, leap into the air to impress a mate. Thus the advanced feather combined the ability to display extravagant colouration, and exaggerated dynamic movements. It has always interested me that feathers are much better at colouration than mammalian fur, which is basically "any colour you like, so long as it's brown". So probably the traditional view we have of dinosaurs is, in many cases, like some intelligent species of the distant future finding the bones of cats and dogs and bears and reconstructing them with naked skin. Then when they discover fossilised fur they say that a lion couldn't look like that, it would be too cute and cuddly and look ridiculous. So, I'm old enough to have seen my own ideas that were crazy fringe stuff now part of the mainstream. This is so cool.
I kind of absolutely reject anyone from my life who says feathers on dinosaurs look 'not scary'. If an abnormaly massive eagle was swooping down on you, ripping you open with its talons, would you call it not scary?
Earth Tooth Yeah, I have some cool looking birds, but fortunately, my youngest roosters are tame to the point of being feathered puppies. crimson red survival My mother once caught a rooster of ours swallowing a mole whole. I've seen my hens fighting over a rat carcass. And little can be both simultaneously cute, ridiculous, and frightening than an angry broody hen.
+Frahamen The thing is, that we evolved in Africa, were there were no big feathered predators left. What we in our earliest days had to fear were the manes of proto-lions, tusks of elephants and jaws of crocodiles. There's a reason why we fear scaly, horned monsters with huge teeth, because long ago we had to in order to survive.
Today we either have fur or feathers. There used to be a lot more options. Imagine if some disaster wiped out all mammals except bats. A hundred millions years later intelligent beings might dig up giraffes and lions and say, "wow bats used to be really weird".
I can't help but snicker when someone from the States argues that feathered depictions of dinosaurs are less cool-looking ever since I heard someone point out that by that logic bald eagles look dumb because they're not literally bald. All this makes me curious about hair now. Especially as to how exclusive to mammals it actually has been throughout time. Any synapsid that isn't a mammal is usually assumed to look about as lizard-like as any dinosaur that isn't a bird has been pictured as, but is it possible hair is older than mammals in general? And does hair have its own homologous scale-like parallels? It's pretty curious to think about.
There's no connection between the term Bald Eagle and them not being bald and people not liking feathers on dinosaurs. They would think that Bald Eagles look less cool regardless of their name.
We do know that Estemmenosuchus probably lacked filaments, as the skin impression we have shows scaleless, smooth skin, so at the very least therapsids were ancestrally naked
Watching a turkey vulture up close provides a good example of the use of feathers in flight. Their movements are rather slow and easy to follow. When they take off, you can see each wing flap and hear the air pushed out of the way. When they soar, it is easy to see how the movements of the primaries are used to control direction. Since the primaries are easily distinguishable by their silver coloration, this is even easier. It is important to note, however, that most early birds (no pun intended) did not have a 'bastard wing', meaning that their primaries did not form a curved surface at the ends of their wings. I don't know how relevant this is, but I hope that this is useful information.
*Silently fangirls over the fact that Steven said my name omg!!* This episode was great, thanks for listening to fan opinions! I also would like to say that this show really has helped me learn tons about dinosaurs. I've always been a fan of them, but I've only ever been exposed to improper depictions from pop media. My favorite toys as a kid were the dino toys, and I always would worship them as true ideals for dinosaurs, which obviously isn't accurate lol. PS feathers only make them more badass, I don't understand where those close-minded peeps get their opinions from, but hey, to each their own!
I love the idea of dinosaurs being feathered......as for making them "less scary".....anyone who says that needs to go somewhere they can see ostriches, UP CLOSE...and look at them in the face....then imagine them MUCH bigger, heavier, with teeth as long as your fingers (or longer).....and tell me how that's "less frightening".....
Tim Hyatt the reason why people say “Feathered dinosaur aren’t scary” is because we never dealt with large predatory birds before, we dealt with lions bears Tigers Leopards snakes crocodiles rhinos etc. when we see birds, we see them as cool looking creatures or goofy looking, not scary creatures that would kill you on spot.
whatever is big or strong enough to hurt you even if it's a giant pomeranian puppy it is scary fear comes not only from appearence of an animal but also what it can actually do to you or what YOU THINK what it can do to you
I think it would be super dope if we could have an update on the phylogeny of feathers in dinosaurs/archosaurs with the late 2018-early 2019 papers on pterosaur pycnofibres being homologous to feathers / more feather evidence or evidence against them (e.g. tyrannosaurus lacking them). Please do an update on this!!!
I think I'm the opposite of some other people because I was disappointed when I found out adult T-Rex probably DIDN'T have most or possibly any of its body covered by dense plumage. Dinosaurs being feathered makes them seem more real in my imagination, and I like thinking of them as real creatures as opposed to mythical dragons.
Same I love feathers, but in my opinion, this makes the t-rex special and it adapted in a way that helped it avoid overheating when running down its prey long distances.
I just found your videos and what I've seen so far is sober, robust and well cited science. You stand for truth in a dark world and in doing so you have great honor. I hope your channel gets the millions of views it deserves. I honor you.
Your closing statement about pop-culture bubbles is right on the nose for archaeology too, especially Palaeoarchaeology. So many people, even our experts, are so wrapped up in these old popular narratives that new and exciting discoveries are often swept aside or unknown to the public for decades. The radical changes in how the public saw Homo neanderthalensis over the decades since its initial discovery is an excellent example of this. We still have this 'flower child human bonobo' myth surrounding Neanderthals that's been going on since the 70's. And I'm not even going to touch the whole "primitive humans can't do 'advanced' things" narrative that's still in our cultural memory. Like, we KNOW that human beings built and sailed boats as far back as 50,000 years, but even our archaeological gatekeepers aren't keen on the idea of sea-faring Paleolithic humans.
As of 2019 I think we've recanted on feathered t-rexes right? I remember Saurian updated their model to reflect new findings suggesting it wouldn't be feathered. I'd be happy if someone educated could comment something meaningful about this. Thanks!
We have not yet found proof that tyrannosaurus rex had feathers, however we do know its slightly smaller ancestors did, but it is not wrong to assume that t-rex probably had way less feathers for display or none at all due to the risk of overheating. T-rex was a distance runner meaning it hunted its prey large distances and for that to be possible it would not be good to have a thick coat of feathers.
Whoever thinks science ruined dinosaurs and made them uncool with feathers obviously hasn't had much exposure to certain native American and ancient South American cultures. Feathers be badass.
I absolutely adore Jurassic Park, it sparked my interest in dinosaurs when i was a child and ive loved them ever since. But over the years ive been so entranced in all the new things we are learning about them, I was so excited when i learnt that dinosaurs could of been/were feathered! This ginormous creature like a trex was covered in small feathers? Blew my mind! (in a good way) Jurassic Park will always hold a place in my heart, but i will never let pop culture get in the way of true science!
Hopefully, our books and hard drives will have kept all that information. It'd be a shame if all of humans collective research and study were obliterated.
A few billion years into the future is an incredibly long time. Eukaryote life is barely 2 billion years old. Animalia is not even 700 million years old. By some estimates, due to changes of the Sun, the Earth will suffer from carbon dioxide depletion in about 600-800 million years into the future. Photosynthesis will no longer be possible, and multicellular life will die out. So maybe a few billion years into the future is too far. But perhaps in tens of millions of years, other organisms will ponder on the appearance of mammals and humans,
We have aprox. 1600 years left of interglacial climate, and roughly 50 million years of stable sun temperatures. There will likely not be anything left in this planet in a billion years.
Bird`s tailfeathers have an off center Rachis. You can EASILY tell whether the feather came from the L. or R. side of the tail. Only the 2 central feathers have a centered rachis....Also, some birds have feathered feet. Owls, for example. The feathers are fur like, but pretty thick. If you want to see some amazing feathered feet, look at fancy chickens/pigeons, some of those have actual contour feathers growing from their feet!
This was a really great episode. I really appreciate your passion in combating "feather resistance". I'm about to become a father and I'm trying to not get my hopes up too much that I will raise a child who draws feathered dinosaurs.
The problem with depictions and perceptions of feathered dinosaurs is the extent that people were portraying all dinosaurs being covered. Back in 2013-2016 every paleoartist was putting full bird plumage on absolutely every dinosaur when they heard that all dinosaurs pry had feathers, without ever taking into account the type or amount of feathers the animal most likely had. It was almost like suggesting all mammals were covered completely in huge coats of fur like a dog, because they associate the word hair with dog fur.
A question from someone new to your subscribers' list: Any non-dinosaurs allowed (other than Pterosaurs)? Elasmosaurus and other long neck plesiosaurs, Mosasaurus and Tylosaurs . . . a lot of newer data seems to be changing perceptions about these significant ancients as well. Great stuff, btw. I'm no Paleontologist or Paleoecologist, but I am a well read dilettante with a real interest in the Mesozoic. I am also a dedicated fantasy illustrator fascinated by the change in the way those ancients (et al) are perceived, both in popular culture, and by scholars researching salient topics. My first impressions of ancient "monsters" were drawn from that initial, wonderful, sight of the Tyrannosaurus rex mural at the back of Dinosaur Hall at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh . . . about 55 years ago. Heady stuff for a nascent artist with strong interest in Natural History.
Dang, I have been on the scaly side of the fence on this topic ever since the begging of the feathered dinosaur discoveries, but for some reason this video has swayed me. I would prefer more references, but I appreciate the honesty in the form of emphasizing fact over speculation and eluding to how much we still don't know. I love this series! Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge!
There are plenty of scaly dinos and plenty of feathered and proto-feathered dinos. We need more evidence to determine for certain which had what but we know quite well for some.
Its "the truth" only until a new hypothesis is explored and it gets enough traction to be included as a "there is a theory..." aside. Dinosaur science is so fluid, I HATE it when anyone speaks in absolutes. At the ABSOLUTE BEST, we can say, "to our current understanding..." NOTHING is set in stone about dinosaurs except the bones themselves.
Great video, learned a lot with it! Waiting to see more! I'd like also to make an observation. I keep thinking you said "Pincofibers" or "Pinkofibers" instead of "PiCNofibers". Seems like you switched the letters CN to NC. I noticed it in the Pteranodon episode, but though I must be mistaken, but again I hear in this episode, around 19:31. Maybe you should check the spelling and pronunciation of the word, just to make sure it's accurate. Keep up with the good work!
thegeekgroup i recently found this series and i was going to request a Spinosaurus episode on this video. as i scroll down i see this as the first comment. I cant wait to see the Spinosaurus episode! this is an awesome series!!!
+thegeekgroup I have a feeling it would be horrifically inaccurate. People, Spinosaurus is closer to a crocodile than a heron or pelican in how it lives.
So this is my take away from the end of the video about feather resistance- Dinosaurs w/o feathers = “Movie monsters” Dinosaurs w/ feathers = Actual animals
I'm wondering if the feathers were used primarily for display. Also, keratin can do a lot of things, and the length would be important as well. Short, very stiff single-strand feathers or the like could be a good deterrant combination with more traditional "armor."
"please don't let your prejudices get in the way of you learning things"... I wish someone, someday, would take a giant bat, and beat that phrase into collective heads of humanity until it finally sticks. It would solve all of our problems, this one sentence, if it were made into life's mantra.
I was much into dinosaurs as a kid and then they got well boring and cliche.... But simply learning that they had feathers had violently reignited that wonder... it brought back the sense these were REAL creatures and so much is yet to be learned about them!
Mike the bike OH I'm cool with it too, not all dinosaurs were feathered obviously, so it's still cool to imagine both feathered and non feathered variants of what we aren't sure have them.
I'm really taken aback by the quality of research done for this video. :) In the vein of this topic, how much feather coverage would you say a grown Tyrannosaurus had, and what sort of feathers would it have had even given it's size, habitat and extant skin impressions?
Oscar Stainton Why thank you! We haven't found a tyrannosaurus in the kind of sediment which preserves feathers, so we have to rely on bracketing, which says _Tyrannosaurus_ had stage I, the simple, fur-like (or cassowary-like?) filaments. I don't have enough expertise to answer your coverage question. The usual reasoning is that today's largest land mammals lack fur, so multi-tonne dinosaurs wouldn't have covering, either . . . but dinosaurs' metabolisms weren't as endothermic as large mammals' are, and _Tyrannosaurus_ in particular lived in a few different biomes. There's plenty of variety in feathered _Tyrannosaurus_ paleoart, most of it perfectly reasonable. Take your pick?
Steven Bellettini Fascinating! I suppose bracketing could be used to determine how many dinosaurs from all of the various groups had feathers. I really never thought T.rex had any use for highly developed feathers like the Dromeosaurs anyway. So I would imagine something filamentous like a cassowary, lining the animal's neck, arms, back and tail. So something more along the lines of a cassowary or an ostrich. I would theorize that like Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus, T.rexes that lived in the far north would have been more covered in feathers for insulation, but Rexes living in warmer southern regions would need less prominent or developed feathers. But, scaly or feathered, T.rex would still be a terrifying creature to encounter. Thank you for answering!
Steven Bellettini Tyrannosaurus skin has been found though, the famous Wyrex specimen, and it is the classic bare skin, so we can't say that Tyrannosaurus was 'covered' in feathers. Also the lifestyle of Tyrannosaurus wouldn't be convenient for feathers, how would it clean them? Wouldn't they be detrimental to injuries? A Tyrannosaurus with more Crocodilian skin makes more sense to me. Plus hasn't Tarbosaurus been found with even more skin impressions?
+Oscar Stainton feathers can be used to keep the body cool and things like ostriches live in a much hotter environment than hell creek is calculated to have. So yeah T-Rex would very, very much likely have feathers. TREY the explainer just did a vid on this
+IndianaJoel93 but you see all(either that or almost all) dinosaurs have a combination of bare skin, fethears, and avian scales (bird scales like on chicken feet) and the bit of T-Rex skin that we have found is an area that most feathered Dino's have bare as well.
I never understood the sentiment that feathers aren't threatening. People always go for the demeaning comparison to poultry which is stupid because for one - turkeys and roosters are very aggressive and you DO NOT want to mess with them. And they never make comparisons to something majestic like an eagle - the symbol of nations, a perfect killing machine. And dinosaurs still had teeth and claws, they will always be inherently fearsome creatures no matter what. I grew up with the knowledge that small theropods had feathers. It was an established fact during my gradeschool obsession with these creatures that I never questioned. Reptilian raptors and such meant nothing to me as I never had a connection to them. So how do feathers make these animals any less imposing? It's an insult to birds honestly. Like haven't these feather-haters ever seen Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds'? And don't they know what a Cassowary is?
i have a burning hatred for the “dinosaurs aren’t scary with feathers” mentality. THEY AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY! they were living breathing creatures. each fossil was an individual that was alive and walked the earth just like us. they aren’t monster movie villains, they were animals. also, the t. rex chicken comparison bothers me so much. how about comparing it to a giant non flying eagle.
Since the making of this video, more T. rex skin impressions have been found with no indication of feathers. Also, don’t forget about carnotaurus - full body skin impressions and no feathers!
This is one of the more inspiring YDAW episodes. As usual, it is informative and engaging. Moreover, it clearly conveys the sense of the wonder that comes with discovery, not only with dinosaurs but in any field. It also explains "feather resistance" (the bias against portraying dinosaurs with feathers), how wrongheaded it is in the face of our current understanding of dinosaurs, and how cool dinosaurs look with feathers anyway. Really great talk, thank you.
Kulindadromeus doesn't have stage III feathers. There was an early abstract from SVP that suggested stage III feathers, but it was retracted before the paper was published (the abstract was for a talk that was cancelled) The authors were only able to get some of these structures to agree with stage 1 protofeathers (which is basically saying they look like simple hair). It's disingenuous to call them feathers until they pass the tests of homology. Unfortunately the authors didn't seem to care about this and have repeatedly referred to these filaments as feathers, regardless of lack of evidence.
Peter Buchholz Sorry about my wording. It made things sound misleading. I didn't mean to suggest that the abstract was retracted. I meant that the statement in the abstract about finding stage III protofeathers was.
Interesting to see him say we know T-Rex had feathers only for us to later discover it had scale impressions over a lot of its body, the way elephants lost their fur. I personally think feathered dinosaurs are cool but it's interesting how backlash to feather resistance led to a brief period of over-feathering
This channel is criminally underappreciated. You better believe I've been telling everyone who's had the misfortune to ask me how I'm doing in the last week about this. But one question still plagues me, one that I hope is answered somewhere in these videos: what is Steven's favorite dinosaur?
The idea of feathered dinosaurs bothered me initially, but as time has passed I've grown to accept it, specially with Raptors, since feathers make them look like Giant Eagles, and that's just cool. Although I can't really imagine dinosaurs like T-Rex with feathers, I can imagine them with those Protofeathers all over their body, specially on their back, and that mental image was just better when I saw an actual image of a representation of a T.Rex with Protofeathers. It looked amazing. I very much prefer imagining dinosaurs with feathers more similar to Eagles and Falcons than Turkeys, what I mean is by the way they look, Turkeys look way too fluffy for my taste, but Eagles and Falcons look badass with them, dinosaurs could look badass with feathers too.
I really like feathered dinosaurs. For one, it makes them look more like real animals rather than fantastical monsters. And I don't think that feathers makes say utahraptor less scary. Imagine a huge lump of feathers hiding in the bushes. At first you don't even notice it among the foliage. Then the next moment you see this creature emerge. For a second you can't even make out its shape. You only see a sea of feathers, you don't even know what to make of it. Then you see the claws, the scaly leg, the sharp teeth in its mouth. Running away at this point is futile. Tell me that would NOT be effing terrifying. I'm generally not scared of birds, but I had some unpleasant experiences with roosters, turkeys, geese and swans when I was little. I challenge anyone not to shit themselves if an ostrich, emu or cassowary would attack them.
Imagine if Microraptor had survived and evolved. What would we have today? Maybe we would have eagle sized biplane-fliers, maybe the forelimbs and hind-limbs would evolve such that they combine in flight, maybe the legs and tail would have combined after all legs out behind an animal ia more natural that legs off to the sides, maybe the legs would have evolved to be less effective as legs creating an animal that spends almost it's entire life in flight equivalent to some sort of sky-seal, maybe we'd have one of each of those things. Isn't speculation about what could have so much fun?
"this does not mean the dinosaurs that had this would be fluffy ducklings. that would be cute, but that is not necessarily the case" I think you will find that BECAUSE it is cute it IS necessarily the case.
If it makes you feel any better, I started finding dinosaurs ten times more interesting and cooler looking once it became known that a lot of them were feathered. As a person who likes drawing from imagination but respecting believable anatomy, feathers give rise to so many possibilities!
I really like this series of episodes. Even though it involve... such a "kiddish" thing, like toys. However, it is very nice way to speak about dino anatomy with very straight and clear examples. From what you should not do and what you should do. For me, as an artist, it is pretty neat to see major details put in this easy to understand way. On the feathered dino topic.. Im one of those who still adore scal-y, non-feathered dino looks. As even the best work of art makes them look like... angry chikens. Though, as much as i love dragon-dinosaurs, its exciting to get new information and discovery. I split my dream dinos with real ones very clearly and try to keep up with al the updates on these creatures. The relation to birds itself is still an awesome thing.
My bird likes dinosaur videos, but it left some unfortunate side affects. He now screaches and attacks everything in sight, and he has developed a taste for flesh. He has adopted the pseudonym of "Velocitiel".
Ah yes, the return of 'feathered animals aren't scary." These people have never dealt with fowl in person, let alone something the size of a Cassowary or Ostrich.
The best thing about feathered dinosaurs is that they're still around. There's one outside my window right now that won't shut up.
David Ozab
All dinosaurs were feathered. Only some lost their feathers.
I have one sitting on my shoulder right now
Taxtro Carnotaurus wants to know your location
@@MrCmon113 trex wasnt FEATHERED A
Taxtro not all of them were feathered. The T. Rex didn’t have feathers.
"Please don't let your prejudices get in the way of you learning things."
That should be on the cover of every textbook in every school.
Bob McLennan It can also be applied to so many other topics besides feathers too. Honestly, I believe that holding onto that prejudice is one of humanity's greatest problems.
I up this, this is why I hate discussing about anything feather related because no matter what side I'm on, even if I'm on neither, someone will lose their shit at me.
It should be tattooed on the foreheads of Clovis First "scientists"
@@scoobusanubus737 They don't hold onto prejudice...
I love the feathered theory way more and, in fact, no one looks at an Eagle and says "This thing would look fierce as fuck without those stupid feathers". I think feathers would have served to make them look even MORE fierce. And, of course, amplifies the cuteness of the smaller, less scary ones.
My grandparents took me to Dinosaur Land a while back and upon seeing a bunch of dino bones my grandpa was like “well those look like bird bones to me idk what took paleontologist so long” my grandparents are the best.
It's not quite "Feather Resistance" that I hate, as it is the really obnoxious trend of people saying "Well we'll never see a REAL dinosaur, so we can all just make up whatever we want no matter how stupid or unrealistic!"
It feels like an actual insult to the field of paleontology, considering the fact that the job of a paleontologist is to learn about how these animals lived and what they were like. When people say "well, we'll never know what a REAL dinosaur is like, so who cares about accuracy!" all I hear is "Paleontology is a useless static science that has never accomplished anything besides digging up some dusty old bones, so who cares what the 'experts' say! Fossils tell us nothing!" And they're wrong. There are so many things fossils can tell us, you just have to know what to look for.
It's not just feather haters who say that either, it's also BANDits, ill-informed JP fanbrats, Creationists, etc.
I totally agree. People should show respect for the amazing creatures that once roamed the Earth and the people who kindly gives us the information.
"And God said, "WE NEED SOME MO FUKKIN DINOSAURS UP IN HERE!" And there was."
I fixed my religion
T R3KT Dinosaurs with feathers are badass.
Then I said too bad.
Yea show respect for dinosaurs and feather resistance
I am so used to feathered raptors that the "scaly" versions of raptors don't look as real nor as cool as the feathered kind, it looks a bit like when you shave a bear or a cat, not a happy sight. Feathers give them more character and honestly makes them endlessly more terrifying. Feathered dinosaurs was one of the best paleontological discoveries ever in my opinion.
I agree, something about the feathers makes them feel more real, more alive. Probably because it feels a bit familiar. Seeing dinos without feathers, the most shocking imo is older depictions of scaly therizinosaurs, just look really alien and it's almost impossible for me to imagine them as living, breathing creatures. Adding the feathers just feels right.
I can't look at a lizard dromaeosaur without going "ugh".
"dont let your prejudices get in the way of you learning something." one of the best lines about education ever.
I love your enthusiasm. It ramps up and you catch yourself and then a moment later it ramps up again. Its that passion that makes this channel great.
Yeah but he doesn't spend a lot of time on the feathered ones either, lol.
😅😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
an episode I'd love to see is an episode on "shrinkwrapping" and the common process of restoring dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures by only considering the basic contour of its skeleton. there's so many renditions of skeletal, bony dinos that just feel plain wrong and I'd love to see your take on the shrinkwrap practice/how dinosaurs are potentially being misinterpreted.
This would be an amazing video. So many people when they think of dinosaurs, even when they think of the scientifically accurate ones, think of their faces skin wrapped. Even me. That would be great. STEVE DO THIS PLEASE :>
Until a few years ago, scientists forgot that dinosaurs would probably had cartilage between their spinal cord. You may be asking toooo much for them, at this point.
I think shrinkwrapping will decrease as we see them more as birds and less as bipedal lizards.
yep, and the worse thing is these reconstructions are considered accurate by sources like wikipedia
Feather resistance makes me so mad, because you don't look at an eagle or a swan and think it looks goofy or dumb or not scary. You look at an eagle and see a magnificent predator, and you look at a swan and see grace and elegance (and, of course, if you know anything about swans, a very real danger). Cassowaries look a bit silly, but everyone knows they will fuck you up at any given opportunity. You don't think less of birds because they had feathers, so you shouldn't think less of dinosaurs!
I see an Velociraptor as a beutifull pretator and some drawing of them are scary as fuck
+Bewilderbeastie Honestly I don't think any bird looks cool or scary, I don't really like birds in general but I get your point. You can't say they did not have feathers when they obviously did. But it does get kinda silly when people start putting feathers on sauropods, hadrosaurs, ceratopsids, carnosaurs etc.
I don't know, I saw a stuffed giant moa at the Natural History museum and that was legitimately terrifying. I only came up to its chest and I'm 171cm tall. I can't imagine how scary that thing would have been in real life. Also, ostriches are quite worrying to encounter in real life.
"Aw, man, just put feathers on everything!" * feathers cat *
I saw a feathered Ceratopsid the other day XDD
Did it say hello?
"Please don't let your prejudices get in the way of you learning things." is one of the best sentences I've ever heard.
This video completely changed how I look at dinosaurs. I'm not a Super Dinosaur Enthusiast, I just started watching this series because it's cool and I learn stuff; but that depiction of Anchiornis was the first time I really, truly understood and processed that all of these were actual real animals that existed on this planet.
As a kid, I kind of mentally categorized dinosaurs as fantasy creatures without realizing it; I knew they were real and fascinating, but I mean, I also had encyclopedia-style fiction books on the biology of dragons, so I think somewhere deep down I had put dinosaurs away in that corner of my mind, as being plausible cool creatures of myth.
Seeing that dinosaur, its actual colors and feathers, and realizing Oh That's Just A Bird Actually, somehow made it inmediately clear that dinosaurs, all of them, were once very real and tangible animals, as common as the birds and cats I see every day. It inmediately made me a hundred times more invested in paleontology and how fascinating it is to find out more about these animals
Absolutely yeah, it’s why they’re so special and it’s why so many people are obsessed with them
Should've shown some cassowaries and their feathers. Their feathers are very simple compared to most birds' contour feathers. And if you want a bird that looks like a dinosaur (complete with giant talons on the feet) the cassowary certainly fits.
SAI Peregrinus I avoided referencing cassowaries for this episode because there was a spell where practically _all_ fuzzy/fluffy coelurosaurs got restored with unkempt cassowary-style feathers--which _is_ sometimes accurate, but more often is . . . overly hair-metal-looking. I'm glad that phase is over, is what I'm getting at.
You're right on about those feet of theirs, though. Also, their head crests are a pretty dramatic example of cranial ontogeny in a living dinosaur.
I find feathers exciting. I was an early "believer" that fully developed feathers evolved before flight. My opinion was that they originally evolved their complexity for display purposes, and I still take the view that the first "flights" were actually the ability to, um, leap into the air to impress a mate. Thus the advanced feather combined the ability to display extravagant colouration, and exaggerated dynamic movements. It has always interested me that feathers are much better at colouration than mammalian fur, which is basically "any colour you like, so long as it's brown".
So probably the traditional view we have of dinosaurs is, in many cases, like some intelligent species of the distant future finding the bones of cats and dogs and bears and reconstructing them with naked skin. Then when they discover fossilised fur they say that a lion couldn't look like that, it would be too cute and cuddly and look ridiculous.
So, I'm old enough to have seen my own ideas that were crazy fringe stuff now part of the mainstream. This is so cool.
The thing with the lion is a really good comparison.
Perhaps fur is so dull in color because most mammals are colorblind?
The “feather resistance” has clearly never fought or seen a goose before
That speech at the end about feather resistance was epic. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops to every Awesome-Bro Jurassic Park fan. Bravo Steve
I kind of absolutely reject anyone from my life who says feathers on dinosaurs look 'not scary'. If an abnormaly massive eagle was swooping down on you, ripping you open with its talons, would you call it not scary?
Emus and ostriches are some of the most terrifying animals alive today
@@asocialevent8168 Cassowary: Hold my fruits
Never mind the fact that dinosaurs are not obliged to look scary to naked primates who evolved 60+ million years after they (mostly) died out.
I love how people scream that T.Rex and such didn't have feathers, and then still restore it with the "turned-off" flight feathers on its feet. :D
Yet studies show it likely did not have feathers.
Saying a dinosaur with feathers looks like a chicken is like saying a tiger or lion with fur looks like a rabbit.
besides, chickens are really cool looking actually? and roosters will fuck with your shit man
RushingRussian19 THANK YOU!
exactly also chickens can be completely terrifying...have you ever seen a chicken eating a mouse?
crimson red survival you Don't want to get on a chicken's bad side...
Earth Tooth Yeah, I have some cool looking birds, but fortunately, my youngest roosters are tame to the point of being feathered puppies.
crimson red survival My mother once caught a rooster of ours swallowing a mole whole. I've seen my hens fighting over a rat carcass. And little can be both simultaneously cute, ridiculous, and frightening than an angry broody hen.
I didnt know about the confirmed feather colors!!! That's the coolest thing I've heard all week!
You should totally do an episode of this dedicated to Jurassic World and/or Park. Oh how many inaccuracies there are in those movies...
***** Nuuuuu! XD
***** Not sure, but the next DI ep will be out this Friday.
***** Yep.
***** A clue you say? Hm... "Life finds a way".
***** You'll have to find out.
All those people who say: "feathers = not scary" clearly never met an angry Ostrich...
+Frahamen Or an angry cassowary, if they were so unfortunate to trespass on its territory.
+Frahamen The thing is, that we evolved in Africa, were there were no big feathered predators left. What we in our earliest days had to fear were the manes of proto-lions, tusks of elephants and jaws of crocodiles. There's a reason why we fear scaly, horned monsters with huge teeth, because long ago we had to in order to survive.
+Frahamen i was thinking the same thing lol
Or an angry turkey, trust me, NEVER upset a turkey. (Not sarcasm, I raise turkeys)
a horde of pissed of geese
Today we either have fur or feathers. There used to be a lot more options. Imagine if some disaster wiped out all mammals except bats. A hundred millions years later intelligent beings might dig up giraffes and lions and say, "wow bats used to be really weird".
I actually prefer dinosaurs with feathers personally. Makes them seem elegant and fantastical.
I didn't know there was a dinosaur called Feathers.
Can't wait till saurian comes out
xD
It had feathers or somthing like that , idk anymore ,do you?
bruh
legends say it was made purely of feathers.
I can't help but snicker when someone from the States argues that feathered depictions of dinosaurs are less cool-looking ever since I heard someone point out that by that logic bald eagles look dumb because they're not literally bald.
All this makes me curious about hair now. Especially as to how exclusive to mammals it actually has been throughout time. Any synapsid that isn't a mammal is usually assumed to look about as lizard-like as any dinosaur that isn't a bird has been pictured as, but is it possible hair is older than mammals in general? And does hair have its own homologous scale-like parallels? It's pretty curious to think about.
There's no connection between the term Bald Eagle and them not being bald and people not liking feathers on dinosaurs. They would think that Bald Eagles look less cool regardless of their name.
We do know that Estemmenosuchus probably lacked filaments, as the skin impression we have shows scaleless, smooth skin, so at the very least therapsids were ancestrally naked
Watching a turkey vulture up close provides a good example of the use of feathers in flight. Their movements are rather slow and easy to follow. When they take off, you can see each wing flap and hear the air pushed out of the way. When they soar, it is easy to see how the movements of the primaries are used to control direction. Since the primaries are easily distinguishable by their silver coloration, this is even easier. It is important to note, however, that most early birds (no pun intended) did not have a 'bastard wing', meaning that their primaries did not form a curved surface at the ends of their wings.
I don't know how relevant this is, but I hope that this is useful information.
Any person who thinks that feathers make dinosaurs less scary has never heard of terror birds.
I love terror birds, they're my favorite prehistorical extinct animal that wasn't a dino
@@coconutthecockatiel478 but they were dinos ;)
*Silently fangirls over the fact that Steven said my name omg!!*
This episode was great, thanks for listening to fan opinions! I also would like to say that this show really has helped me learn tons about dinosaurs. I've always been a fan of them, but I've only ever been exposed to improper depictions from pop media. My favorite toys as a kid were the dino toys, and I always would worship them as true ideals for dinosaurs, which obviously isn't accurate lol.
PS feathers only make them more badass, I don't understand where those close-minded peeps get their opinions from, but hey, to each their own!
Sierra Ashes ...and when did they ever mention your name?
*Wait wtf you can do bold?*
I love the idea of dinosaurs being feathered......as for making them "less scary".....anyone who says that needs to go somewhere they can see ostriches, UP CLOSE...and look at them in the face....then imagine them MUCH bigger, heavier, with teeth as long as your fingers (or longer).....and tell me how that's "less frightening".....
They dont even need to see ostriches
any bird can be terrifying
Tim Hyatt the reason why people say “Feathered dinosaur aren’t scary” is because we never dealt with large predatory birds before, we dealt with lions bears Tigers Leopards snakes crocodiles rhinos etc. when we see birds, we see them as cool looking creatures or goofy looking, not scary creatures that would kill you on spot.
geese
Many people have not been sourranded by an angry mov of hissing goose and it shows
whatever is big or strong enough to hurt you even if it's a giant pomeranian puppy it is scary
fear comes not only from appearence of an animal but also what it can actually do to you or what YOU THINK what it can do to you
I mean, I think a Deinonychus depicted with feathers is actually kinda scarier. Somehow makes it seem more real, and less distant.
If people think birds can't be threatening... Just look at Terrorbirds.
P Shuckle yeah. Things like phorusrhacos, kelenken, brontornis, titanis, and others were the apex predators of cenozoic South America.
Utahraptor gets extra terrifying when you think of it as this sort of eagle-panther creature.
I think it would be super dope if we could have an update on the phylogeny of feathers in dinosaurs/archosaurs with the late 2018-early 2019 papers on pterosaur pycnofibres being homologous to feathers / more feather evidence or evidence against them (e.g. tyrannosaurus lacking them). Please do an update on this!!!
Yes this would be very good to see.
I think I'm the opposite of some other people because I was disappointed when I found out adult T-Rex probably DIDN'T have most or possibly any of its body covered by dense plumage.
Dinosaurs being feathered makes them seem more real in my imagination, and I like thinking of them as real creatures as opposed to mythical dragons.
Same I love feathers, but in my opinion, this makes the t-rex special and it adapted in a way that helped it avoid overheating when running down its prey long distances.
just got home from an 11 hour day and i get to eat chipotle and watch a new one of these. i may cry
Ben Iverson wut
I just found your videos and what I've seen so far is sober, robust and well cited science. You stand for truth in a dark world and in doing so you have great honor. I hope your channel gets the millions of views it deserves. I honor you.
a Klingon wrote this
I'm much happier with cute, fluffy Velociraptors than ugly scaly ones 😊
And they are scarier. I mean they will look bigger and more scary.
Your closing statement about pop-culture bubbles is right on the nose for archaeology too, especially Palaeoarchaeology. So many people, even our experts, are so wrapped up in these old popular narratives that new and exciting discoveries are often swept aside or unknown to the public for decades. The radical changes in how the public saw Homo neanderthalensis over the decades since its initial discovery is an excellent example of this. We still have this 'flower child human bonobo' myth surrounding Neanderthals that's been going on since the 70's.
And I'm not even going to touch the whole "primitive humans can't do 'advanced' things" narrative that's still in our cultural memory. Like, we KNOW that human beings built and sailed boats as far back as 50,000 years, but even our archaeological gatekeepers aren't keen on the idea of sea-faring Paleolithic humans.
Could you do not a dinossaur, but other creatures like therapsids, or even back to those weird sea creatures that existed before the Triassic?
As of 2019 I think we've recanted on feathered t-rexes right? I remember Saurian updated their model to reflect new findings suggesting it wouldn't be feathered. I'd be happy if someone educated could comment something meaningful about this. Thanks!
We have not yet found proof that tyrannosaurus rex had feathers, however we do know its slightly smaller ancestors did, but it is not wrong to assume that t-rex probably had way less feathers for display or none at all due to the risk of overheating. T-rex was a distance runner meaning it hunted its prey large distances and for that to be possible it would not be good to have a thick coat of feathers.
I love feathered Dinos. The only thing I don't like about them is it's harder to draw.
Socialist Weeb I think scaly Dino’s are harder to draw.
Science doesn't care if you love em or not.
Whoever thinks science ruined dinosaurs and made them uncool with feathers obviously hasn't had much exposure to certain native American and ancient South American cultures. Feathers be badass.
Steven you should do an episode on Acrocanthosaurus
I absolutely adore Jurassic Park, it sparked my interest in dinosaurs when i was a child and ive loved them ever since. But over the years ive been so entranced in all the new things we are learning about them, I was so excited when i learnt that dinosaurs could of been/were feathered! This ginormous creature like a trex was covered in small feathers? Blew my mind! (in a good way) Jurassic Park will always hold a place in my heart, but i will never let pop culture get in the way of true science!
The passion that Steven has with the truth it is infectious! I love this. I LOVE feathered theropods. They are gorgeous.
Unless it's a carnotaurus and most of its derived kin with a full coat of feathers
Science don't care what you think, remember that.
Think of all the colors that they would have displayed.
This series is so so underrated, you got me back into dinosaurs thanks 🙏
The fact that we can place actual color to some dinosaurs now is honestly my favorite thing I've learned in a long time.
Feathered Dinosaurs ARE COOL!
Yes they are! :D
The Poke'Saurus #featherseverywere
The Poke'Saurus #NERDYCOMBO.
In a few billion years, I wonder if paleontologists will argue whether or not mammals had fur
Hopefully, our books and hard drives will have kept all that information. It'd be a shame if all of humans collective research and study were obliterated.
Whether the human race will be around in a few billion years is a good question
A few billion years into the future is an incredibly long time. Eukaryote life is barely 2 billion years old. Animalia is not even 700 million years old.
By some estimates, due to changes of the Sun, the Earth will suffer from carbon dioxide depletion in about 600-800 million years into the future. Photosynthesis will no longer be possible, and multicellular life will die out.
So maybe a few billion years into the future is too far. But perhaps in tens of millions of years, other organisms will ponder on the appearance of mammals and humans,
In a few billion years living on earth will be impossible for humans and other complex forms of life.
We have aprox. 1600 years left of interglacial climate, and roughly 50 million years of stable sun temperatures. There will likely not be anything left in this planet in a billion years.
Bird`s tailfeathers have an off center Rachis. You can EASILY tell whether the feather came from the L. or R. side of the tail. Only the 2 central feathers have a centered rachis....Also, some birds have feathered feet. Owls, for example. The feathers are fur like, but pretty thick. If you want to see some amazing feathered feet, look at fancy chickens/pigeons, some of those have actual contour feathers growing from their feet!
This was a really great episode. I really appreciate your passion in combating "feather resistance". I'm about to become a father and I'm trying to not get my hopes up too much that I will raise a child who draws feathered dinosaurs.
The problem with depictions and perceptions of feathered dinosaurs is the extent that people were portraying all dinosaurs being covered. Back in 2013-2016 every paleoartist was putting full bird plumage on absolutely every dinosaur when they heard that all dinosaurs pry had feathers, without ever taking into account the type or amount of feathers the animal most likely had. It was almost like suggesting all mammals were covered completely in huge coats of fur like a dog, because they associate the word hair with dog fur.
A question from someone new to your subscribers' list:
Any non-dinosaurs allowed (other than Pterosaurs)? Elasmosaurus and other long neck plesiosaurs, Mosasaurus and Tylosaurs . . . a lot of newer data seems to be changing perceptions about these significant ancients as well.
Great stuff, btw. I'm no Paleontologist or Paleoecologist, but I am a well read dilettante with a real interest in the Mesozoic. I am also a dedicated fantasy illustrator fascinated by the change in the way those ancients (et al) are perceived, both in popular culture, and by scholars researching salient topics.
My first impressions of ancient "monsters" were drawn from that initial, wonderful, sight of the Tyrannosaurus rex mural at the back of Dinosaur Hall at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh . . . about 55 years ago. Heady stuff for a nascent artist with strong interest in Natural History.
some birds don't have quill knobs but have flight feathers, that makes finding winged dinosaurs interesting
Dang, I have been on the scaly side of the fence on this topic ever since the begging of the feathered dinosaur discoveries, but for some reason this video has swayed me. I would prefer more references, but I appreciate the honesty in the form of emphasizing fact over speculation and eluding to how much we still don't know. I love this series! Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge!
There are plenty of scaly dinos and plenty of feathered and proto-feathered dinos. We need more evidence to determine for certain which had what but we know quite well for some.
with the feathers the type 2, a silkie is probably the best example of feathers having barbs but not barbules
9 dislikes, some people can't handle THE truth
Yeah IKR they still believe that dinosaurs are naked
Now it;s 13....
Damn JPfanboys & their lizard monsters...
Its "the truth" only until a new hypothesis is explored and it gets enough traction to be included as a "there is a theory..." aside. Dinosaur science is so fluid, I HATE it when anyone speaks in absolutes. At the ABSOLUTE BEST, we can say, "to our current understanding..." NOTHING is set in stone about dinosaurs except the bones themselves.
Great video, learned a lot with it! Waiting to see more! I'd like also to make an observation. I keep thinking you said "Pincofibers" or "Pinkofibers" instead of "PiCNofibers". Seems like you switched the letters CN to NC. I noticed it in the Pteranodon episode, but though I must be mistaken, but again I hear in this episode, around 19:31. Maybe you should check the spelling and pronunciation of the word, just to make sure it's accurate. Keep up with the good work!
Eu coleciono dinossauros Bah! Greek word roots! _shakes fist_ Thanks, will say it properly in the future.
Eu coleciono dinossauros I also thought my ears were mistaking the words.
The stratified background is great. Much less distracting than the whiteboard. I hope you keep adding silhouettes as you go.
was very excited when i saw in 2016 that they had found a piece of tail from a baby dinosaur, encased in amber. covered in feathers .
How about a Spinosaurus episode?
***** We've actually shot one! It's slotted for animation in post-production, sometime after Triceratops.
Can't wait to see it then.
thegeekgroup i recently found this series and i was going to request a Spinosaurus episode on this video. as i scroll down i see this as the first comment. I cant wait to see the Spinosaurus episode! this is an awesome series!!!
+thegeekgroup I have a feeling it would be horrifically inaccurate.
People, Spinosaurus is closer to a crocodile than a heron or pelican in how it lives.
Irondune X I say it moved liked a crocodile but hunted like a bird.
Imagine if Microrapter just looked like a much more terrifying crow
So this is my take away from the end of the video about feather resistance-
Dinosaurs w/o feathers = “Movie monsters”
Dinosaurs w/ feathers = Actual animals
I'm wondering if the feathers were used primarily for display. Also, keratin can do a lot of things, and the length would be important as well. Short, very stiff single-strand feathers or the like could be a good deterrant combination with more traditional "armor."
"please don't let your prejudices get in the way of you learning things"... I wish someone, someday, would take a giant bat, and beat that phrase into collective heads of humanity until it finally sticks. It would solve all of our problems, this one sentence, if it were made into life's mantra.
Golden eagles knock over their prey, using their wings to stabilize on top of the prey, and eat it alive. Do you think dromaeosaurs did this as well?
most likely
Eagles do not eat their prey alive. They deliver a sharp, killing bite to the base of the skull, as do most modern Raptors (Birds of Prey).
Maybe
Do they stab the prey with their foot?
@@prismstudios001 there is a video of a snake eagle eating a snake alive
I was much into dinosaurs as a kid and then they got well boring and cliche.... But simply learning that they had feathers had violently reignited that wonder... it brought back the sense these were REAL creatures and so much is yet to be learned about them!
Thanks for finally doing a video on my favourite dinosaur, feathers!
Great message delivered passionately
Good video, but am I the only who is fine with both scaly and feathered dinosaurs
Mike the bike OH I'm cool with it too, not all dinosaurs were feathered obviously, so it's still cool to imagine both feathered and non feathered variants of what we aren't sure have them.
The best thing I've learned when learning about dinosaurs is that birds are together with turtles the closest relatives to crocodiles
Hi Steven, did you get my Carnotaurus? :)
Henry Reed We did! You can watch him open it here: ruclips.net/video/-EGIKnQgxXA/видео.htmlm45s
Hahaha thank you!!!!
I'm really taken aback by the quality of research done for this video. :)
In the vein of this topic, how much feather coverage would you say a grown Tyrannosaurus had, and what sort of feathers would it have had even given it's size, habitat and extant skin impressions?
Oscar Stainton Why thank you!
We haven't found a tyrannosaurus in the kind of sediment which preserves feathers, so we have to rely on bracketing, which says _Tyrannosaurus_ had stage I, the simple, fur-like (or cassowary-like?) filaments.
I don't have enough expertise to answer your coverage question. The usual reasoning is that today's largest land mammals lack fur, so multi-tonne dinosaurs wouldn't have covering, either . . . but dinosaurs' metabolisms weren't as endothermic as large mammals' are, and _Tyrannosaurus_ in particular lived in a few different biomes.
There's plenty of variety in feathered _Tyrannosaurus_ paleoart, most of it perfectly reasonable. Take your pick?
Steven Bellettini Fascinating! I suppose bracketing could be used to determine how many dinosaurs from all of the various groups had feathers. I really never thought T.rex had any use for highly developed feathers like the Dromeosaurs anyway. So I would imagine something filamentous like a cassowary, lining the animal's neck, arms, back and tail. So something more along the lines of a cassowary or an ostrich.
I would theorize that like Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus, T.rexes that lived in the far north would have been more covered in feathers for insulation, but Rexes living in warmer southern regions would need less prominent or developed feathers.
But, scaly or feathered, T.rex would still be a terrifying creature to encounter. Thank you for answering!
Steven Bellettini Tyrannosaurus skin has been found though, the famous Wyrex specimen, and it is the classic bare skin, so we can't say that Tyrannosaurus was 'covered' in feathers. Also the lifestyle of Tyrannosaurus wouldn't be convenient for feathers, how would it clean them? Wouldn't they be detrimental to injuries? A Tyrannosaurus with more Crocodilian skin makes more sense to me. Plus hasn't Tarbosaurus been found with even more skin impressions?
+Oscar Stainton feathers can be used to keep the body cool and things like ostriches live in a much hotter environment than hell creek is calculated to have. So yeah T-Rex would very, very much likely have feathers.
TREY the explainer just did a vid on this
+IndianaJoel93 but you see all(either that or almost all) dinosaurs have a combination of bare skin, fethears, and avian scales (bird scales like on chicken feet) and the bit of T-Rex skin that we have found is an area that most feathered Dino's have bare as well.
I never understood the sentiment that feathers aren't threatening. People always go for the demeaning comparison to poultry which is stupid because for one - turkeys and roosters are very aggressive and you DO NOT want to mess with them. And they never make comparisons to something majestic like an eagle - the symbol of nations, a perfect killing machine. And dinosaurs still had teeth and claws, they will always be inherently fearsome creatures no matter what. I grew up with the knowledge that small theropods had feathers. It was an established fact during my gradeschool obsession with these creatures that I never questioned. Reptilian raptors and such meant nothing to me as I never had a connection to them. So how do feathers make these animals any less imposing? It's an insult to birds honestly. Like haven't these feather-haters ever seen Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds'? And don't they know what a Cassowary is?
Raptor prey restraint hypothesis, look it up
YDAW is my #1 way to think about something other than the pandemic. I love you, Steven. Feathered dinosaurs ARE cool. Yay for microscopes! xoxo
i have a burning hatred for the “dinosaurs aren’t scary with feathers” mentality. THEY AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY! they were living breathing creatures. each fossil was an individual that was alive and walked the earth just like us. they aren’t monster movie villains, they were animals. also, the t. rex chicken comparison bothers me so much. how about comparing it to a giant non flying eagle.
Since the making of this video, more T. rex skin impressions have been found with no indication of feathers. Also, don’t forget about carnotaurus - full body skin impressions and no feathers!
This is one of the more inspiring YDAW episodes. As usual, it is informative and engaging. Moreover, it clearly conveys the sense of the wonder that comes with discovery, not only with dinosaurs but in any field. It also explains "feather resistance" (the bias against portraying dinosaurs with feathers), how wrongheaded it is in the face of our current understanding of dinosaurs, and how cool dinosaurs look with feathers anyway. Really great talk, thank you.
thank you for an extremely informative lesson! :)
Kulindadromeus doesn't have stage III feathers. There was an early abstract from SVP that suggested stage III feathers, but it was retracted before the paper was published (the abstract was for a talk that was cancelled) The authors were only able to get some of these structures to agree with stage 1 protofeathers (which is basically saying they look like simple hair). It's disingenuous to call them feathers until they pass the tests of homology. Unfortunately the authors didn't seem to care about this and have repeatedly referred to these filaments as feathers, regardless of lack of evidence.
Cybersuchus Noted. Thanks!
Cybersuchus The abstract wasn't "retracted", Godefroit broke his knee and was stuck in a hospital.
Peter Buchholz Sorry about my wording. It made things sound misleading. I didn't mean to suggest that the abstract was retracted. I meant that the statement in the abstract about finding stage III protofeathers was.
I like your passion. It's contageous. Subscribed.
Anyone that thinks a feathered creature doesn`t look intimidating should watch a golden Eagle knock a Chamois off a mountainside.....
Interesting to see him say we know T-Rex had feathers only for us to later discover it had scale impressions over a lot of its body, the way elephants lost their fur. I personally think feathered dinosaurs are cool but it's interesting how backlash to feather resistance led to a brief period of over-feathering
Probably the best one so far, nice message on the end! thanks.
Dinosaurs got fethers and That's Awsome!
Well done Steven.
Imagine a full grown trex wiggle his arms and begins to fly
THE WHAT
feathered dinos are what exited me about them and now i ma a total dino nerd! you are so sweet and nice!
This channel is criminally underappreciated. You better believe I've been telling everyone who's had the misfortune to ask me how I'm doing in the last week about this. But one question still plagues me, one that I hope is answered somewhere in these videos: what is Steven's favorite dinosaur?
People who think that feathered dinosaurs aren't scary have never actually watched a bird hunt and eat.
Why can I only give you ONE thumb-up ?
Why has only less than 100000 people seen this ?
Absolutely magnificent presentation :-D
I love this show!
Do Triceratops or Allosaurus.
The idea of feathered dinosaurs bothered me initially, but as time has passed I've grown to accept it, specially with Raptors, since feathers make them look like Giant Eagles, and that's just cool. Although I can't really imagine dinosaurs like T-Rex with feathers, I can imagine them with those Protofeathers all over their body, specially on their back, and that mental image was just better when I saw an actual image of a representation of a T.Rex with Protofeathers. It looked amazing.
I very much prefer imagining dinosaurs with feathers more similar to Eagles and Falcons than Turkeys, what I mean is by the way they look, Turkeys look way too fluffy for my taste, but Eagles and Falcons look badass with them, dinosaurs could look badass with feathers too.
I really like feathered dinosaurs. For one, it makes them look more like real animals rather than fantastical monsters. And I don't think that feathers makes say utahraptor less scary. Imagine a huge lump of feathers hiding in the bushes. At first you don't even notice it among the foliage. Then the next moment you see this creature emerge. For a second you can't even make out its shape. You only see a sea of feathers, you don't even know what to make of it. Then you see the claws, the scaly leg, the sharp teeth in its mouth. Running away at this point is futile. Tell me that would NOT be effing terrifying. I'm generally not scared of birds, but I had some unpleasant experiences with roosters, turkeys, geese and swans when I was little. I challenge anyone not to shit themselves if an ostrich, emu or cassowary would attack them.
Imagine if Microraptor had survived and evolved. What would we have today? Maybe we would have eagle sized biplane-fliers, maybe the forelimbs and hind-limbs would evolve such that they combine in flight, maybe the legs and tail would have combined after all legs out behind an animal ia more natural that legs off to the sides, maybe the legs would have evolved to be less effective as legs creating an animal that spends almost it's entire life in flight equivalent to some sort of sky-seal, maybe we'd have one of each of those things. Isn't speculation about what could have so much fun?
"this does not mean the dinosaurs that had this would be fluffy ducklings. that would be cute, but that is not necessarily the case"
I think you will find that BECAUSE it is cute it IS necessarily the case.
Cannot give enough thumbs up for this. Well done, sir.
If it makes you feel any better, I started finding dinosaurs ten times more interesting and cooler looking once it became known that a lot of them were feathered. As a person who likes drawing from imagination but respecting believable anatomy, feathers give rise to so many possibilities!
I really like this series of episodes. Even though it involve... such a "kiddish" thing, like toys.
However, it is very nice way to speak about dino anatomy with very straight and clear examples. From what you should not do and what you should do.
For me, as an artist, it is pretty neat to see major details put in this easy to understand way.
On the feathered dino topic.. Im one of those who still adore scal-y, non-feathered dino looks. As even the best work of art makes them look like... angry chikens.
Though, as much as i love dragon-dinosaurs, its exciting to get new information and discovery.
I split my dream dinos with real ones very clearly and try to keep up with al the updates on these creatures.
The relation to birds itself is still an awesome thing.
My bird likes dinosaur videos, but it left some unfortunate side affects. He now screaches and attacks everything in sight, and he has developed a taste for flesh. He has adopted the pseudonym of "Velocitiel".
Ah yes, the return of 'feathered animals aren't scary." These people have never dealt with fowl in person, let alone something the size of a Cassowary or Ostrich.