Scrustle said:
Well that's just peachy. I've always wanted to know how T-Rex gets it on.
On a more serious note, T-Rex has feathers now? I know they recently decided that a lot of dinosaurs had feathers, but T-Rex? That's weird... They found any fossil evidence or anything that specifically points to that?
I don't really think I have a favourite dinosaur, but when I was a kid I got this big fat book about them since I was obsessed with them at the time. I currently use it as a mouse mat. There was one crazy looking one in there I liked called Therizinosaurus [http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28200000/Therizinosaurus-dinosaurs-28287278-512-632.jpg] which was supposed to have feathers too. It was massive too, 39ft in my book.
From Wikipedia:
"In 2004, the scientific journal Nature published a report describing an early tyrannosauroid, Dilong paradoxus, from the famous Yixian Formation of China. As with many other theropods discovered in the Yixian, the fossil skeleton was preserved with a coat of filamentous structures which are commonly recognized as the precursors of feathers. It has also been proposed that Tyrannosaurus and other closely related tyrannosaurids had such protofeathers. However, skin impressions from a Tyrannosaurus rex specimen nicknamed "Wyrex" (BHI 6230) discovered in Montana in 2002,[65] as well as other large tyrannosaurid specimens, show mosaic scales,[66] leading Xu et al. (2004) to speculate that the tyrannosauroids may have had different skin coverings on different parts of their bodies - perhaps mixing scales and feathers. They also speculated that feathers may correlate negatively with body size - that juveniles may have been feathered, then shed the feathers and expressed only scales as the animal became larger and no longer needed insulation to stay warm. They based this on the fact that as an object increases in size, its ability to retain heat increases due to its decreasing surface area-to-volume ratio. Therefore, as large animals evolve in or disperse into warm climates, a coat of fur or feathers loses its selective advantage for thermal insulation and can instead become a disadvantage, as the insulation traps excess heat inside the body, possibly overheating the animal. Protofeathers may also have been secondarily lost during the evolution of large tyrannosaurids like Tyrannosaurus, especially in warm Cretaceous climates.[67]
This theory was challenged by the discovery of Yutyrannus, a 9 meter (30 ft) long, 1,400 kilogram (3,100 lb) tyrannosauroid that preserved feathers on some widely-spaced body parts, indicating that its whole body was covered in feathers, but it is worth noting that it lived in a much colder environment.[68]"
Yeah, so they at least have reason to depict juveniles with feathers. Adults, on the other hand, are still a matter of speculation.
Anyway, favorite dino?
Probably Giganatosaurus (for being a huge-as-fuck therapod) or Troodon (for extreme intelligence and brain size)
As for sexing it up, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersaurus would seem kind of awkward...
Yes.
