Showing posts with label Zhenyuanlong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zhenyuanlong. Show all posts

Monday, July 20, 2015

Velociraptors Had Feathers

Scientific American has a story about a new dinosaur discovery in China which shows, among other things, a feathery dinosaur at 125 million years.  As one of the discoverers puts it:
Zhenyuanlong is covered in feathers. Simple hairy filaments coat much of the body, larger veined feathers stick out from the tail, and big quill-pen-feathers line the arms, layered over each other to form a wing. This is a dinosaur that looks just like a bird. If you could see it alive you would probably make no distinction between it and, say, a turkey or a vulture.

Look at
Zhenyuanlong and you see what the real Velociraptor would have been like. Far from being a scaly-skinned reptilian monster, Velociraptor would have been a fluffy, feathered poodle from hell.
Here is a picture of the fossil, accompanying the story.