(Science ruins everything) dinosaurs with feathers

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Since Jurassic world is coming out soon it seems like it would be fun to make a random dinosaur thread.

I've been reading a dinosaur blog lately "WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE MIND" that talks about dinosaurs and how they're shown in media.

I want to point to three articles he wrote
https://whendinosaursruledthemind.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/when-dinosaurs-ruled-the-mind-36-dinosaurs-over-the-years-tyrannosaurus/

https://whendinosaursruledthemind.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/when-dinosaurs-ruled-the-mind20-dinosaurs-over-the-years-raptors/

https://whendinosaursruledthemind.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/when-dinosaurs-ruled-the-mind-55-saurian-speculation-dinosaur-feathering/

I would recommend reading them but if you don't want to the basic. The first two are talking about their depicted over the years of raptors and T.rexs and the other one talks about the feather thing in general and how common having feather probably was for dinosaurs.

Moviebob also talked about this while back http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/9929-Feathered-Dinosaurs-Arent-Cool

my question is simple would you like dinosaurs to be shown more scientifically accurate(with feathers and acting more birdlike) or do you think stuff like feathers ruins the look of a lot of them and you would rather have them be more lizardlike even if it's not scientifically accurate.

ps. sorry for poor grammar.

edit:I forgot to put a poll in, sorry

 

[tm96]

I think I prefer them without the feathers. My suspension of disbelief can handle dinosaurs not being scientifically accurate.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Jurassic Park dinos *are* scientifically accurate. They're specifically cooked up without feathers by InGen.

 

[Scarim Coral]

To me I think they should phase it in after my generation or rather present the feathers to the next generation. As a kid I LOVE Dinosaurs and their portrayal in the book I seen and read back then.

 

[JoJo]

I prefer them with feathers, if appropriate, it ties them in nicely with their living descendants. Feathered dinosaurs can still be threatening, I mean what isn't cool about a giant prehistoric predatory bird with arms and claws rather than wings?

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Jurassic Park dinos *are* scientifically accurate. They're specifically cooked up without feathers by InGen.

I think Jurassic Park can get away with it since they aren't technically dinosaurs but imperfect clones made from frogs DNA but I'm still confused why they decided to call the deinonychus velociraptors.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Ehh, what's not cool about feathers? They could be dark grey, blend the beast in with its environment even better.

...but I'm still confused why they decided to call the deinonychus velociraptors.

Because "velociraptor" sounds cooler.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Jurassic Park dinos *are* scientifically accurate. They're specifically cooked up without feathers by InGen.

I think Jurassic Park can get away with it since they aren't technically dinosaurs but imperfect clones made from frogs DNA but I'm still confused why they decided to call the deinonychus velociraptors.

Same reason archae-whatitsname-ix is called "Indominus rex" in the new movie: rule of cool.

 

[Recusant]

Science hasn't "ruined" anything; all the ruining that's been done has been by overzealous people leaping on relatively minor evidence. Slapping on modern feathers (in modern patterns and distances, no less!) is, if anything, less scientifically accurate than going pure modern lizard. A good comparison would be asking whether a given group was warm-blooded. It'd work fine for the little dudes, but the bigger ones would be tremendously sluggish, unless they were eating constantly, which would require easy-to-bring-down prey, which would've made the era about nothing but carnosaurs, which it most definitely wasn't (nature does not put biological chainsaws on things it wants you to kill easily). It's why nearly any biologist you talk to will tell you that warm- and cold- bloodedness is, even in modern times, an oversimplification. "Feathers or no feathers" is just the same.

 

[Angelowl]

Feathers. I remember a webcomic with deinonychi with proper feathers, a whole pack of them. They were utterly terrifying due to the whole "pack of rabid birds tearing people apart through pure ferocity". They were certainly not less scary. And latter I saw artwork of one interpretation, with proper lighting. They looks far scarier than the stuff from J-Park.

With proper colouration even a T-Rex can be scary as fuck when feathered or what the pre-feather stuff that chicks have is called in english.

 

[Hazy992]

In a way I'd like to see them scientifically accurate as I want fabulous T-Rexes that look like Liberace, but they are more badass looking without feathers.

I mean it's impossible to clone dinosaurs anyway so I can suspend my disbelief over this.

 

[DoPo]

As always, XKCD already addressed this



I pretty much just wanted to post this, I don't think I have anything else to say.

...

OK

Spoiler: I lied

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qpdk-U8fI0]

And now, I shall leave.

 

[Malbourne]

I'd always kind of considered regular dinosaurs to be kind of...boring, being big lizards and all. It probably explains why I didn't appreciate Godzilla as much as my friends. This is the bird-lover in me talking, but anything with feathers is cooler, even dinosaurs (especially dinosaurs)!

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm sure they had feathers, but that's for the younger generation to accept. It's too late for me. Dinosaurs were presented to me as rad lizard beasts for as long as I can remember. To suddenly say 'Yeah no, they where actually these big lame turkey creatures'... Fuck you science, I'm keeping my awesome dinosaurs.

Jurassic Park dinos *are* scientifically accurate. They're specifically cooked up without feathers by InGen.

If we're going by the book they were "historically" accurate. As a matter of fact, in the book Henry Wu suggests to Hammond that they engineer the dinosaurs to be more in line with common expectations, because they're so odd looking. Both the T-Rex and Raptors have forked tongues and the sauropods have extremely agile, swan like necks. They also move frighteningly fast compared to how people would expect animals of that size to move.

 

[DementedSheep]

I don't mind either way. Feathers can be done in a way that doesn't look too silly and birdlike can be plenty intimidating. I don't know whey so many people seem to think if they had feathers they have to make them look like tropical birds.

I'd still be running from this thing (which probably isn't what they looked like either, oh well).

Spoiler

 

[Neverhoodian]

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?

 

[baddude1337]

If we're going by the book they were "historically" accurate. As a matter of fact, in the book Henry Wu suggests to Hammond that they engineer the dinosaurs to be more in line with common expectations, because they're so odd looking.

This is one point that people criticizing the movie for not being accurate seem to forget. The Jurassic Park dinosaurs aren't perfect exactly replicated dinosaurs, but ones imperfectly created and cloned, with frog DNA filling in the blanks.

I personally don't like the whole feathers thing, scientifically accurate or not. And entertainment doesn't have to be crazy super ultra realistic to be good, especially when the vast majority of people still see dinos as big lizards.

 

[flying_whimsy]

I get that the movie dinosaurs (as far as jurassic park canon is concerned) are engineered to not have feathers.

That said, I'd actually really like to see them rendered with feathers. I want to see what it looked like, and how it might have changed the way they moved (like that xkcd comic that mentions raptors using wings for stability).

I've already seen a bunch of movies with giant lizard creatures and dinosaurs: I want to see one with feathered dinosaurs.

 

[Nieroshai]

To be honest, cassowaries are terrifying, and I imagine the velociraptor wouldn't be less so for not being naked.