Dinosaurs live on!

Extensive Fossil Finds in China

A great many of the new discoveries about dinosaurs have come from fossils unearthed in China in the last 20 plus years. 

Dilong paradoxus

In the fossil beds of China's north eastern Liaoning Province, a predecessor of T.Rex, the much smaller Dilong paradoxus was discovered in 2004. These 1.5 metre long specimens were found with clear evidence of feathers covering their neck, body and tail.  Living some 60 to 70 million years before T.Rex, D.Paradoxus is thought to have been one of the earliest relatives of it's giant descendant.

While there is no evidence yet that T.Rex had any feathers, it has been speculated that their young may have been born with a downy coat of protofeathers that would have been shed as they grew to adulthood - much as some modern elephants have body hair in their youth, but lose it as they mature.

Sinosauropteryx

Various other fossils from China show that many of the bird

Dinosaurs live on!

Ongoing research into dinosaur fossils has resulted in many new species of dinosaur being catalogued during the last 20 years - in fact around 90% of all species so far listed have only been confirmed in that time!

But perhaps the most startling news to come from the paleontogists and associated scientists is confirmation that a surprising number of dinsoaurs had feathers.  Some of those feathers were preserved sufficiently well in fossils to allow microscopic analysis of the cell structures and comparisons to bird feathers reveals identical structures and colour cells, allowing rather more accurate descriptions of the colours those specimen had...

Most remarkable of all though is the conclusion that those species of dinosaur are the ancestors of birds we see around us today - dinosaurs live on - albeit in rather smaller species than T Rex!