Were dinosaurs fuzzy?

[David B]

Even the very early ones, even their ancestors?

Looks possible.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7950871.stm

Professor Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist from Ohio University, says this "really muddies the waters" of what researchers know about the origin of feathers.

It suggests that their origin might go right back to the earliest ancestors of all dinosaurs - more than 200 million years ago.

Interesting.

David

[Goldie]

Wow! If they were around today, Paris Hilton would probably buy a small one to carry in her purse! FOZZY!

[DMB]

I guess it adds a bit of credence to the idea that they might have been warm-blooded. Anyone know anything about how warm-bloodedness is thought to have evolved?

[Steviepinhead]

Fuzzy-wuzzy was a dino.
When was 'e first fuzzy?
'Eck if I know!
But bein' fuzzy beats bein' a wino--
So let 'im fuss,
So long's 'e don't whine, no!

[Puck]

Can we really say then, that early dinos were reptilian or bird like? Wouldn't ancestral dinos be something different, or, more likely in between? Wouldn't we want a different classification for an animal that had pre-traits of the different types of animals that would evolved from them? Or do we already have a name for such critter?

[cmoon]

God I hope they were fuzzy.

Pink also! I really love it when reality fucks with peoples' heads.

[Faid]

It's already pretty much established that they were warm, now they're fuzzy... Pretty soon we'll find out they shot rainbows off their bellies.

[Coragyps]

Still probably not all that cuddly, though.....

[DMB]

I can't remember who said it, but I love the idea that eating a boiled egg for breakfast is the revenge of the mammals on the dinosaurs. Sometimes when some stupid bird is annoying me with loud whistling I mutter, "bloody dinosaur!"

[Faid]

I... think it was Carl Sagan in Dragons of Eden? Although it's possible I'm wrong.



cmoon: Alternatively, they could have been fuzzy and white, and only looked pink because of being bathed in the fine red mist they reduced their enemies to... Muahaha!

[Oolon Colluphid]

I guess it adds a bit of credence to the idea that they might have been warm-blooded. Anyone know anything about how warm-bloodedness is thought to have evolved?
There's a chunk about it in Tom Kemp's The Origin and Evolution of Mammals. The book's an excellent reference, but too technical for me to have read much of it without MEGO. I'll check tonight.

But I'll note that 'warm-bloodedness' isn't a digital condition. What mammals -- and possibly dinos -- have is physiological endothermy: a high metabolic rate with some built-in control over it. But remember: whenever you stick your leg out from under the duvet because you're too warm, you're doing just what a lizard does when it moves from sun to shade. And the most primitive (in the phylogenetic sense) mammals, the monotremes (echidnas and platypus), have a sort of halfway house type of physiological endothermy -- some physiological control, but a greater range of bodily temperature than marsupials or placentals.

And given that naked mole rats are effectively ectothermic, it's possible that some dinos were 'warmer-blooded' than others. Perhaps, for example, baby sauropods were endotherms, gradually losing their physiological control (which requires a lot of food) as they grew, becoming ectotherms relying on mass homeothermy.

[Berthold]

Wouldn't we want a different classification for an animal that had pre-traits of the different types of animals that would evolved from them? Or do we already have a name for such critter?
This situation is by no means unique to birds vs. non-avian dinosaurs.

Just take a look at Permian terrestrial vertebrates and try to put them in classes that live now. :wave: