Did the Tyrannosaurus Rex have feathers?

[Jonathanaronda]

So I saw Jurassic Park 3D over the weekend. It is one of my favorite movies. While it is inaccurate in certain areas, I find the experience enjoyable and growing up the T-Rex was one of my favorite movie villains (in a sense). I read a few things where it said that dinosaurs had feathers rather than scales, so I got to reading about the Tyrannosaurus Rex and wondered if they had feathers too. I couldn't get a clear answer, some said yes, some said no. So which is it, did the T-Rex have feathers or not?

[pwagen]

Short answer: maybe.

 

Long answer: We don't really know for sure.

 

Tyrannosaurus hasn't been conclusively proven to have had feathers, although it's possible it had a light coat of some kind. Two ancestors of it has been found to have had feathers; Dilong and Yutyrannosaurus, so it's not an impossibility.

 

Also worth noting is that the feathers back then were somewhat different than what we would today consider feathers.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/lost-worlds/2012/oct/17/dinosaurs-fossils

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-did-t-rex-have-feathers-too-new-discoveries-may-tell-us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutyrannus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilong_(dinosaur)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather#Evolution

[Moontanman]

I'm not sure it would be correct to suggest feathers instead of scales either. Dinosaurs shared many of the characteristics of birds, hollow bones specialized breathing, even sauropods had these. It has been suggested that hatchlings of theropod dinosaurs had feathers to keep them warm until they became big enough to conserve body heat with mass. Velociraptors were almost certainly covered with feathers and in fact may have had what we would see as long flight feathers on their arms. Feathers would have been used as decorative displays and for warmth as well, crests and other sexual displays could have been made up of feathers as well...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur

[Dekan]

Doesn't it seem odd, that feathers haven't been evolved by bats. Bats rely on skin in their wings. The skin is crudely stretched between hypertrophied former hand digits. These digits, grossly lengthened, when viewed in schematic diagrams, resemble Pterodactyls and Pteranodons. Admittedly, these prehistoric animals used only one finger. Whereas bats employ the full hand set.

 

But why haven't bats got feathers on their wings?

 

Or conversely - if bats manage without feathers, why have birds got them?

[pwagen]

But why haven't bats got feathers on their wings? Or conversely - if bats manage without feathers, why have birds got them?

Actually, I believe the answer to that is related to what Ringer wrote here, homologous and analogous traits.

 

Bats and birds both evolved flight, but in different ways. Both manners are perfectly good ways of flying, but they're different from one another. While one could imagine bats having feathers, I think birds would be pretty scrubby flyers if they had none. It's really the same with most animals - why do some have fur and some don't, or why do some run on all four and some skip about on their hind legs?