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By: Elizabeth Winkler 4/9/25
Many people remember watching Jurassic Park movies as a kid with the giant T-rex at the top of the food chain destroying everything in its path. Scaly skin, giant teeth, and the 160 decibel roar are all things that people associate with their favorite prehistoric creatures. What if I said that only some of that was true? In the past couple of years there has been research showing that they have colorful feathers reaching from head to tail rather than the scales they are known to have. Is this really the case? Or is it just some rumors made up to surprise the public?
Picture of what a dinosaur would look like with feathers.
Britannica has an article on their website that shares their opinion on dinosaurs having feathers. In the article it states that there was a research project done in 2019 that found multiple different types of fur patterns on them. That counters the argument that since they were cold blooded they could not have any type of fur or feathers. What could cause them to have the fur if all of them were cold blooded? The article also states that since there has been so much research done they are finding hundreds of more species that could potentially have fur and feathers. Another article on the Britannica website also shares on how there was a dinosaur found in the 1990’s which was confirmed to have feathers.
Model of a dinosaur found with feathers.
The dinosaur was called the Sinosauropteryx, which is an extremely complicated name to say! The dinosaur could reach around the waist at max height and could sometimes only reach the ankle. The discovery of this dinosaur was extremely important to the research of dinosaurs because it opened a new perspective on what the commonly known scaly dinosaurs could look like instead. Many are trying to argue this fact but more knowledge is being discovered on how this could definitely be true.
According to the ICR, (Institute Creation Research), There is no actual proof that they were warm blooded or had any feathers. Their reasoning is that since they were reptiles there is no way they could be warm blooded and that's the only way they could have had feathers. The National History Museum also has an article on their website which has evidence that they didn’t have any feathers because the skin prints from the fossils show scaly skin. It was also stated in the article that there were no feather structures shown in their research that they did on the fossils. How could they have feathers then?
Because of all the research being done over the years the facts prove true that dinosaurs had feathers! Even though there is evidence on both sides there is more proof on how they had some sort of fur or feathers. The knowledge and data is always changing, but for now the question of if dinosaurs had feathers still needs to be proven true.
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