A team led by the world's most successful fossil hunter said that they have found the remains of a feathery dragon-like forerunner of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex at a dinosaur graveyard in northeastern China. The "surprising" creature is a tyrannosaurid that lived between 139 million and 128 million years ago, the researchers led by Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology report on Thursday. Small and slender, measuring about 5.2 feet from tip to tail, the creature had the characteristic two powerful rear feet and flesh-ripping teeth made famous by the T Rex, whose 20-million-year reign ended with the twilight of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. But it had several big differences -- it had relatively long arms compared to its big descendant, as well as a long, dragon-like snout, and its scaly skin was covered with a fibrous coat. Dinosaurs that are believed to have been the ancestors of modern birds had primitive feathery coverings like this.

But in this case, the purpose of the covering was not to provide an evolutionary step for flight but a means to keep warm, the authors suggest. "This is the first direct fossil evidence that tyrannosaurids had protofeathers," their study, published in the weekly British scientific journal Nature says. The discovery has been called Dilong paradoxus. The first word is a composite of the Chinese "di" (emperor) and "long" (dragon), while the second "refers to the surprising characters of this animal," the study says.

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Great T-Rex was big fluffy chick , bet you Jurrassic Park 5 has that in it... totaly rune the scary image

Do think there will Be Jurrasic Park 5 . Anyways, this is cool, I like dinosaurs.

A t rex covered in feathers. Kinda of takes away from the scare factor.

this is what its supposed to look like.

Not scary? imagine being alone with it

Yeah, it makes it scary. Any 5 ton beast with teeth is scary.

I sometimes feel that some paleontologists come to too many conclusions with very little evidence.

The T-Rex had "bone crunching" teeth, not "flesh ripping". That's why some experts now believe that the tyrannosaur was a scavenger, not an active hunter (which makes a lot of sense to me).

Course they'll be a JP5 If it makes a propit or can, Capitalism will keep running with it, even if it ruins the series, like JP4 having dinosaurs with guns and armour.... wtf is that

Man, you guys are all living on the stoneage Jurassic Park image of Dinosaurs.
It's long since been known that the Raptors were covered in feathers primarily during the late Turassic period. Many dinosaurs during this era evolved feathers due to the rapidly changing climate.

So they found a feathery T-Rex..

That's pretty cool. Intresting bit of evolution.

Fierce T. rex's 'fluffy' history


Chinese scientists have unearthed the earliest known relative of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex.
What is more, the creature, which lived 60 to 70 million years before T. rex, had fluffy feathers covering its body.

Xing Xu and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing found their tyrannosauroid in the famous fossil beds of Liaoning Province.

Xu told Nature magazine the discovery would help us understand how some early dinosaurs controlled their body heat.

The dinosaur called Dilong paradoxus was about 1.5 metres long and lived between 128 and 139 million years ago.

The researchers found a partial skeleton with a nearly complete skull, together with fragments from other individuals.

Productive ground

The team describes the animal as "small and gracile" with "relatively long arms with three-fingered hands".

The dinosaur is said to show the distinctively square-snouted profile of its much larger and more famous Late Cretaceous (70-65-million-year-old) cousin.

Evidence of hair-like "protofeathers" was located on the tail and jaw of the animal.

The fossil evidence shows T. rex had scales, not feathers. But Xu suggests the fierce beast may have been like some large mammals today, such as elephants, which lose most of their body hairs as they mature.

"We don't have any evidence that T. rex was covered with feathers," Xu, from the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, told BBC News.

"For the last few years in the western area of China, there have been many feathered dinosaurs found from that area. This latest find is a primitive tyrannosaur covered with primitive feathers.

"So based on all this other evidence, we can conceivably say that even T. rex had fluffy feathers for some stage in her life."

The team includes co-workers from the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and the Museum of Natural History, Tianjin.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3726370.stm

Nah ... still looks scary even w/ the feathers.

But if the T-Rex did indeed have feathers, isn't there a possibility that it evolved or kept evolving into some bird still around today? I know there's been speculation on specific dinosaur species evolving into birds ... haven't heard very much about the T-Rex -- MM

The Raptor I saw from the Chinese exhibition was incredibly fierce looking , especially with feathers . Big bright red puffed out feathers and claws and very sharp teeth .
Why would any-body be surprised that T-rex was more like a chicken than a lizard . Just look at those drumsticks . Colonel Sanders would be impressed.