(Science ruins everything) dinosaurs with feathers

[Johnny Impact]

On the big screen, I want the scaly dinosaurs of my childhood. Reality has no place in entertainment.

Otherwise, I find it hard to get used to new art, since I was always told dinos were scaly. Doesn't bother me, it's just new. I find it interesting from a scientific perspective. Can't really get excited about it as it doesn't make them any less dead.

 

[InterstellarFascist]

Scaly dinosaurs are intentional on the creator's part. Probably not till 2050 will there be feathery dinos on the big screen. When making a big-budget Hollywood movie that cashes in on nostalgia, you can't change anything or people get pissed. Hollywood's idea of realism is less about making a movie realistic from a logical or scientific standpoint as it is making a movie that 'feels' real, even if it is total bullshit. For instance, Planet of the Apes has great CGI and a surprisingly intriguing story that wasn't one-sided, but the whole situation is non sense the more you look into it from a logical standpoint.

Jurrassic World is simply meant to be Jurassic Park with Starlord. It's a monster movie where genecorp (or whatever they're called) just made some scaly dinos since that's what sells money at their theme park of doom.

 

[FalloutJack]

Jack does not readily care. Jurassic Park/World doesn't have accurate dinosaurs, anyway. They're mutations.

 

[Superbeast]

I have not kept up with dinosaur news in the last couple of years (to my shame, I used to want to be a palaeontologist/palaeobiologist) but I was under the impression that not all species of dinosaurs had "feathers", and that the "feathers" were not what we would think of as feathers but rather proto-feathers (more like quills or even downy fur depending on the species).

 

[JoJo]

I'm all for feathers. It's best not to perpetuate inaccurate portrayals of nature, including the prehistoric variety. Besides, birds are interesting creatures.

Since we're on the topic of birds and dinosaurs, I have a question for paleontology buffs out there. Given what we know about feathered dinosaurs and giant birds like Gastornis, have there been attempts to re-examine the "mass extinction" event 65 million years ago? It seems a bit too coincidental that large, flightless birds would appear shortly after feathered dinosaurs supposedly went "extinct." Perhaps some feathered dinosaurs survived and evolved into such creatures?

On Gastornis the vestigial wings mark it out as a giant bird rather than feathered dino, there would be no reason for a hypothetical raptor who survived the K-T event to very quickly lose it's useful arms and claws and replace them with tiny useless wings. You're right about it seemingly being coincidental though, it's what is called "evolutionary relay", the same certain forms get used again and again in nature as they are the most efficient design. Another example would be the resemblance between ichthyosaurs and dolphins, despite the two being very distantly related.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Feathery velociraptor in Sydney Museum.

Spoiler

The Jurassic Park dinosaurs never had feathers, sticking them in now might be odd...but, what's the point of having dinosaurs if they aren't dinosaurs? It's like alien planets that aren't alien.

Having said that, I don't see anything wrong with having lots of pseudoscience monsters in, but as long as it's understood what they are.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Scaly dinosaurs are intentional on the creator's part. Probably not till 2050 will there be feathery dinos on the big screen. When making a big-budget Hollywood movie that cashes in on nostalgia, you can't change anything or people get pissed. Hollywood's idea of realism is less about making a movie realistic from a logical or scientific standpoint as it is making a movie that 'feels' real, even if it is total bullshit. For instance, Planet of the Apes has great CGI and a surprisingly intriguing story that wasn't one-sided, but the whole situation is non sense the more you look into it from a logical standpoint.

Jurrassic World is simply meant to be Jurassic Park with Starlord. It's a monster movie where genecorp (or whatever they're called) just made some scaly dinos since that's what sells money at their theme park of doom.

That would be InGen, a subsidiary company of Umbrella Inc. and Weyland-Yutani.

 

[Nazulu]

No, science only makes sense of things. I usually hate most horror movies with spiders as the main villain because it's rare to see them attack like an actual fucking spider (spider buff here). They nab things almost instantly, not jumping high and slow in the air or running constantly towards everything. C'mon, seeing giant creatures move at demon speed has always been the scariest thing.

I can imagine a good dinosaur film where they all have feathers. It would be interesting to see something extreme like the whole species dressed up like tropical birds. I'm always for different views. However, fuck the people who suddenly get abusive when they don't see realistic dinosaurs. Ever since the evidence came, there have a been a load of shit heads piling on others and entertainment just because it's not accurate. If others like the reptile look, then there is nothing wrong with that. Not every new piece of entertainment has to be accurate to be great.

 

[Thaluikhain]

No, science only makes sense of things. I usually hate most horror movies with spiders as the main villain because it's rare to see them attack like an actual fucking spider (spider buff here).

Also, they have spiders that build big webs acting like wolf spiders.

You never see a giant orb spider sitting in its web doing nothing except scare away Mormons.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

And here I am finding that dinos were more likely endo or mesothermic far more interesting in terms of what they were cabable of/behavior.

 

[Nazulu]

No, science only makes sense of things. I usually hate most horror movies with spiders as the main villain because it's rare to see them attack like an actual fucking spider (spider buff here).

Also, they have spiders that build big webs acting like wolf spiders.

You never see a giant orb spider sitting in its web doing nothing except scare away Mormons.

Exactly. And as soon as someone does touch the web, the spider would get there in no time, not slowly crawling to them for dramatic effect.

 

[Cold Shiny]

It's just another example of scientists attempting to change facts to suit theories, instead of the other way around. "We think beyond a shadow of a doubt that dinosaurs evolved into birds, but before any of it's ever really confirmed, we're gonna just change them to straight up look like birds." I love it when the scientific community makes these leaps and no one ever questions it.

 

[Starik20X6]

Bring on the feathers I say! If nothing else it opens up a lot more aesthetic possibilities beyond "greenish-brown, leathery scales". Everyone seems to translate "some dinosaurs had feathers" into "dinosaurs wouldn't look out of place in a Mardi Gras parade". While it's possible some of them were brightly coloured like parrots or peacocks, it's equally possible they were these mottled, matted balls of feathery fury. Perhaps they looked like pigeons; mostly dark grey feathers with the odd bit of iridescence patched in. Are you telling me a dinosaur that's steel-grey with metallic green shiny patches isn't completely awesome? Or perhaps they were like eagles, clad mostly in brown with a striking white head! Eagles are badass, no? Or maybe they were like vultures, with big bald patches and kinda matted looking feathers.

 

[Nazulu]

It's just another example of scientists attempting to change facts to suit theories, instead of the other way around. "We think beyond a shadow of a doubt that dinosaurs evolved into birds, but before any of it's ever really confirmed, we're gonna just change them to straight up look like birds." I love it when the scientific community makes these leaps and no one ever questions it.

A lot of people question it. I don't know how you came up with that, as the researchers themselves question the information too if you look into what they write. They are trying it on to see if it fits, to put it simply.

There are still dinosaurs that have been confirmed as reptiles, and so this has lead many experts to believe it is far more complex than just every species evolving from birds.

 

[Starik20X6]

It's just another example of scientists attempting to change facts to suit theories, instead of the other way around. "We think beyond a shadow of a doubt that dinosaurs evolved into birds, but before any of it's ever really confirmed, we're gonna just change them to straight up look like birds." I love it when the scientific community makes these leaps and no one ever questions it.

Uh, that's not really how it happened at all. First it was the discovery that birds are dinosaurs, then scientists started noticing (without knowing what they were) quill points on some dinosaur fossils, then we started finding more fossils with directly or indirectly preserved evidence of feathers (providing the eureka moment for the aforementioned quill bumps). And it was never "oh shit, all dinosaurs looked like chickens!" It was "evidence suggests a lot of previously thought to be featherless dinosaurs either had feathers or a kind of photo-feathers."

I mean, does that "straight up look like a bird"? Because if it does, shit, I want to be where you are, because the birds there must be badass!

 

[MrFalconfly]

"oh shit, all dinosaurs looked like chickens!"

Regarding that comment specifically (I know that's not your comment, but nevermind).

Why do people always think "chicken" when some say that Dinosaurs should have feathers?

Have people completely forgotten about the super aggressive cassowary? Or Birds-of-prey like Eagles or Falcons?

 

[Gray-Philosophy]

I've grown to like the featherless look more than the feathered one, but it's probably just because I've seen those more in various contexts. Howeverm, I'd really like to see more of the feathery dino's, I generally prefer scientific accuracy.

I feel it's important to stick to the feathers if you include dinosaurs in your medium and intend to depict scientific accuracy, otherwise it's just a fictional reptile monster, which is also cool in it's own right.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

No one seems to be looking at the blog posts so going to point out some specifics from the last one mainly dinosaur discoveries

Spoiler

Yutyrannus

these guys were the first large sized theropod to be found with feathers and it has open up the floodgates for more depictions of large carnivorous dinosaurs with feathers(keep in mind that this guy live in very cold environments so this doesn't prove that all of them were really fluffy)

Spoiler

Triceratops

This guy was found recently with quills, even though it's not that much feathering it shows herbivores having some kind of feathering on them too.

with these and more discoveries dinosaurs are starting to look like feathers were natural to all species. keep in mind they're still is a lot of gray area on how much each dinosaur had but it seems to becoming a lot more common.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

It's just another example of scientists attempting to change facts to suit theories, instead of the other way around. "We think beyond a shadow of a doubt that dinosaurs evolved into birds, but before any of it's ever really confirmed, we're gonna just change them to straight up look like birds." I love it when the scientific community makes these leaps and no one ever questions it.

You're absolutely right. You know as long as you discount all of the very dinosaurian fossils found with very obvious feathers and all of the transitional fossils leading up to early birds. Also, to represent arguments as 'dinosaurs evolved into birds' seems a little disingenuous when it was only a single branch theropods that evolved into modern birds (specifically the maniraptorids). It's on the same level as claiming 'apes evolved into humans'. That not to say ALL dinosaurs had feathers. There's very little evidence to suggest that many of the larger dinosaurs (even larger theropods) actually had feathers as adults.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

No one seems to be looking at the blog posts so going to point out some specifics from the last one mainly dinosaur discoveries

Spoiler

Yutyrannus

these guys were the first large sized theropod to be found with feathers and it has open up the floodgates for more depictions of large carnivorous dinosaurs with feathers(keep in mind that this guy live in very cold environments so this doesn't prove that all of them were really fluffy)

Spoiler

Triceratops

This guy was found recently with quills, even though it's not that much feathering it shows herbivores having some kind of feathering on them too.

with these and more discoveries dinosaurs are starting to look like feathers were natural to all species. keep in mind they're still is a lot of gray area on how much each dinosaur had but it seems to becoming a lot more common.

Yeah that doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem likely that larger species would have feathers into adulthood due to issues with overheating.