Talk:Feathered dinosaur

message: Why doesn't this article explain the evolutionary imperative for feathers or how they evolved? --Hadomaru (talk) 09:07, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing Information 

message: ~
Magmagoblin (talk) 17:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I am a non-specialist, and this is my understanding: An unknown branch of theropods first devloped primitive feather-structures (prob sometime in the jurassic). this gave rise to various feathered dinosaurs, some of whose feathers developed into flight feathers. an unknown branch of these theropods, prob a sister group to maniraptors, gave rise to the birds. Note that feathers may have been much more wide-spread, and appeared much earlier, but it is only the fine fossil quality of Liaoning that has preserved the evidence. So archaeopteryx would be a descendent of the (as yet) unknown feathered theropod, that also gave rise to maniraptors etc. if someone could add detail, confirmation, clean up and put into the artilc, would be good. Mackinaw 15:47, 2004 Nov 28 (UTC)
Magmagoblin (talk) 17:05, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

text: There's a problem: Archaeopteryx is not a theropod; the wikipedia page on this also notes it's a bird; Archaeopteryx is a bird with theropod-like characteristics, but fully bird; it exhibits fully-formed flight feathers, and also has the ligament-attachment points on the bones to control them. It should be removed from this article and de-pictured: its presence here shows dated science.tooMuchData 12:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The distinction is meaningless as "birds", however defined, are theropod dinosaurs. Furthermore, deinonychosaurs (which are not traditional "birds") had flight feathers as well. Albertonykus (talk) 22:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

text: There is no such "line", a bird is a subdivision of theropod, which is a subdivision of dinosaur, in other words, birds are theropods which are dinosaurs. It's like asking "where is the line between primate and mammal?", and "what makes a primate a primate and not a mammal?". Editor abcdef (talk) 06:03, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Archaeopteryx

message: (From article) "the fossilized remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex  was found. Within the fossilized thighbone was remaining soft tissue that helped create a new link between dinosaurs and modern birds."
This is very unclear. Just how did this "remaining soft tissue" help to "create a new link between dinosaurs and modern birds"?? - 23 November 2005
:I was about to complain about this paragraph and then removed it when I noticed the above complaint had been made already.  The paragraph was:
::Recently, in Montana, USA, the fossilized remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex was found. Within the fossilized thighbone was remaining soft tissue that helped create a new link between dinosaurs and modern birds. The T. rex that was found is a suspected female because of a large similarity between the medullary bone, used in the production of eggs, found in modern birds.
The soft tissue sentence is not explained at all, the first sentence doesn't define "recently', the last sentence is an interesting fact but has no context, and overall I don't know what this paragraph has to do with feathered dinosaurs.  Feel free to rewrite/clarify and reinsert if it can be made relevant to this topic.  Tempshill 22:54, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "The first known dinosaur with true flight-structured feathers (pennaceous feathers) is Caudipteryx (135-121 mya), although evidence for these is restricted to its tail, so it is unlikely that these feathers were used for flight; they were more likely used for display."
Caudipteryx is the first to be discovered with pennaceous feathers, not the earliest known, so this could be confusing. Evidence is not restricted to the tail--Caudipteryx famously has small fans of wing feathers. The size/shape of the feathers and structure of the arm is the reason it was flightless, not the location of the feathers. I'll fix it up.Dinoguy2 03:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs a rewrite for clarity

message: The article says...
:Adding to the controversy, in 1999 a supposed 'missing link' fossil of an apparently feathered dinosaur named "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis", found in Liaoning Province, northeastern China, turned out to be a fake (the bottom portion being from a dromaeosaurid now known as Microraptor and the upper portion being from a primitive bird now known as Archaeovolans).
First of all, wasn't "Archaeovolans" a junior synonym of Yanornis? Secondly, what's the official (published) status of the situation regarding Archaeoraptor vs. Microraptor? Is it premature to put Archaeoraptor in quotes?Dinoguy2 14:07, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Archaeoraptor" 

message: " "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis" ... turned out to be a fake (the bottom portion being from a dromaeosaurid now known as Microraptor and the upper portion being from a primitive bird now known as Archaeovolans)." -- Archaeovolans now redirects to Yanornis, therefore I'm changing the text here in Feathered dinosaurs. PLEASE CORRECT IF ANY PROBLEM - IANAP -- Writtenonsand 17:12, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is correct. Archaeovolans *was* named for the top part of "Archaeoraptor", but later turned out to be a junior synonym of Yanornis. (Technically, Microraptor is a junior synonym of Archaeoraptor... but we don't talk about that :X )Dinoguy2 19:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archaeovolans --> Yanornis 

message: i Referenced a paper in the section that needs referencing, but cannot get it to work at the end of the article (in the references section) sorry to be a noob, but any help in sorting this out would be really helpful. Mikey - "so emo, it hurts"</Strong>© 12:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed it. Thanks for the ref--do you happen to have the volume and pagination info (or a link to the PDF online)? Dinoguy2 16:57, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Referencing 

message: This article does not mention problems related to the identification of feathers in the Chinese specimens. The feather impressions could be collagen fibers. Lingham-Soliar reported the same structures in ichthysaurs and pterosaurs. John Ostrom mentioned that calling these structures feathers is more a matter of wishful thinking and speculation. There are theropod genera which were not feathered, including Pelecanimimus, Scipionyx and Compsognathus. This makes it seem like feathers appeared at random.
:This is actually discussed in the article, and has a reference, check it out, Feduccia, A. Lingham-Soliar, T., and Hinchliffe, J.R. (2005). "Do feathered dinosaurs exist? Testing the hypothesis on neontological and paleontological evidence." Journal of Morphology, 266: 125-166.
:However as far as i am aware this paper itself is academically contentious, as mentioned in the article no mammals or lizards finds in the area present the same preservation artifact, but they would have possesed integumental collagen fibres Mikey - "so emo, it hurts"</Strong>© 22:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  no room for criticism 

message: That is contraversial even for evolutionary scientists.http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/06/070601-dino-feathers_2.html65.255.88.233 (talk) 21:25, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Still Contraversial

message: Wouldn't it be nice to have the exact number of specimens that show impressions of feathers, and not just which genera these specimens belong to? And better yet, the number of feathered specimens of each genera found? Is this information available anywhere? FunkMonk (talk) 14:28, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think this information is available, at least in a strictly published form. Some genera are known from dozens of specimens, and I doubt there's a review out there describing what proportion of those preserve feathers for each, or give an exact number. Many specimens of common species remain unsubscribed and may not be described for years at the moment. So, I suppose we could try a section enumerating described specimens, but then we have to decide what counts as described. For example Microraptor gui is "extremely common" and known from several dozen specimens, some have been figured but not described, or only mentioned briefly in descriptions of other specimens. One option may be to just use an independent site like this: , but that's not a published source. Any suggestions? Dinoguy2 (talk) 23:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, seems like it'll be tough then... And just wishful thinking from my side, heh. FunkMonk (talk) 17:51, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many specimens with feathers? 

message: Such annotations on the tree should have refs attached. The suggestion that large therapods like T. rex had plumaceous feathers is quite counter-intuitive, on grounds of the reduced needs of large animals for heat insulation. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Plumaceous feathers inferred' 

message: Comparative anatomy does provide real evidence. Huxley's comparison of Archaeopteryx  with Compsognathus showed that, apart from the arms and the feathers, their skeletal features were closely similar. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparative anatomy 

message: The lead image of this article displays a fully feathered Deinonychus. While Deinonychus may well have been feathered, is there any basis for the fully pennaceous feathers on the arms and tail. I understand that Turner et al. ('07) stated that Velociraptor had feather quills, but has the same been reported for Deinonychus? Is that supposed to be a pygostyle on the tail too?, and is that accurate? It looks too bird like IMO. --Spotty 11222 21:57, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Velociraptor and Deinonyhcus are very close relatives. It only makes sense to base the known feathers of one on the other. All known dromaeosaurs have pennaceous feathers on the arms and tail, and substantially thick coat of feathers on the body, especially the neck and breast. There's no evidence to suggest Deinonychus was an exception. And, "too bird like" compared to what? Deinonychus is a bird under some definitions of that word. Dinoguy2 (talk) 22:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

text: That image isn't free to use, unfortunately, but we have other similar images of Anchiornis already on Wiki (one by me :) ). MMartyniuk (talk) 00:54, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I'd agree with Anciornis instead, as the plumage is so well documented. FunkMonk (talk) 10:31, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead image accurate? 

message: We have Nomingia in the list because it has a pygostyle. Should we add Similicaudipteryx, too? Albertonykus (talk) 03:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch! The authors do explicitely speculate that it carried a feather fan so I reckon it counts, though we do now know that rod-shaped pygostyles don't necessarily indicate a fan (Bepiaosaurus has one, for example, with no long tail feathers). Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: ''[[Similicaudipteryx]]''

message: I was reading the Theropoda blog today and it mentioned Deinonychus being found with a side shelf on its second finger that's supposed to be homologous with those of birds with the implication that Deinonychus definitely had primary feathers. (Taking a look at the original article itself, however, feathers aren't specifically mentioned, only whether or not the shelf equates to aerodynamic ability, which is no.) Albertonykus (talk) 15:31, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Deinonychus''

message: There are some new Similicaudipteryx specimens that preserve feathers, and show their growth stages, no less. The main Similicaudipteryx article needs updating, too, but I don't have time to do so at the moment. Albertonykus (talk) 17:21, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Holy smoke! And they also seem to have given it the head of Incisivosaurus on the restorations. FunkMonk (talk) 18:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Similicaudipteryx'', again

message: I've sometimes seen the idea that Pelecanimimus preserves (or was thought to have preserved) feathers, but does anyone know if this was ever suggested in print? Albertonykus (talk) 08:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Not that I know of, the initial paper only describes them as "integumentary fibers", which could mean anything. I think most people not believe them to be muscle fibers, since naked skin is also preserved in the same area. MMartyniuk (talk) 01:04, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Having read Briggs et al., they do not address the purported integumentary fibers. They confirm that these represent traces of soft tissue, and that's it. Only the throat pouch is written about in detail, reporting that muscle fibers and naked skin are preserved, but they talk only vaguely (if at all) about the soft tissues preserved elsewhere. Albertonykus (talk) 07:42, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Pelecanimimus''

message: Been looking over the original description, and based on my limited grasp of Simplified Chinese characters I can't find any reference to feathers on the actual specimen; they're only referred to in the intro with respect to Liaoning dromaeosaurids in general. Sadly the only photos of it are just huge blurs so I can't verify one way or another. Albertonykus (talk) 12:22, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The Theropod Database entry lists feathers as present, fwiw... Don't have access to the paper itself to check unfortunately. MMartyniuk (talk) 13:30, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Going to blame on the quality of my PDF file for now then. Noticed that feathers don't appear to be mentioned in the text of the paper describing Caudipteryx sp. even though the specimen preserves them. Albertonykus (talk) 03:30, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does ''Sinornithosaurus haoiana '' preserve feathers? 

message: If feathers are inferred for Tyrannosaurids, wouldn't that imply that they lie inside the Compsognathidae, where most sources would place them? Is this a typo in the encoding of the cladogram? — kwami (talk) 23:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I'm asking how feathers could be inferred for Tyrannosaurids when there was no evidence for feathers in Tyrannosaurids (feathers in Yutyrannus were not known at the time), nor for any lineage outside of the Tyrannosaurids. I mean, why not say they're inferred for all dinosaurs? If, however, there's a typo in the cladogram, and the Compsognathidae with feathered Sinosauropteryx was intended to lie outside Tyrannosauridae, then the inference would be compatible with the methods attributed to the study. — kwami (talk) 04:30, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, that oddity has never been addressed, and the cladogram is out of date by now anyway, so I'm deleting. — kwami (talk) 02:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Feathers in tyrannosaurs have been inferred since the discovery of Dilong paradoxus in 2004. MMartyniuk (talk) 12:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  cladogram 

message: no, those feather imprints on Sinosauropteryx are not preservation artifacts. remove that mention that it might be especially because its not cited. Creationists need to stop gunking up Wikipedia with their crazy pseudoscience that has zero evidence to support it.--50.138.213.207 (talk) 01:21, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It wasn't suggested by creationists, but ornithologists, so has to be mentioned, and debunked. FunkMonk (talk) 05:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  yes they are feathers. 

message: Is it possible that it was not scales but feathers that were the standard Integument for Dinosaurs? after the discovery of Tianyulong confuciusi its seeming more and more likely. Because if that is the case then it is undeniable that Birds are Dinosaurs.--50.195.51.9 (talk) 16:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, skin known from all other lines than theropods and heterodontosaurs only show scales. Psittacosaurus was covered in scales everywhere but the back of the tail, it seems, and what the structure they had there was isn't really certain. FunkMonk (talk) 16:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

text: Dredging this up to note that since crocodiles have the genes (albeit modified) to make feathers, that it's entirely plausible that feathers were the default dinosaurian integument; indeed, maybe all dinosaurs had feathers to some extent, the fossilization proecess is quite unkind (usually) to soft tissue in animals; the beds we do have preserving feathers are usually limestone deposits or areas where animals could be burried in ash; not places like Hell Creek or the Morrison. Sauropods could have retained quills on their backs, possibly even hardened them like a porcipine to defend their backs from assault, as could other groups, we simply don't have the fossils to back it up. But the bracket of feathers (essentially "Crocodylus, Passer, their LCA and all descendants", the same definition as that of Archosauria) suggests that all dinosaurs likely possessed some form of feather. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 14:42, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

text: It should be noted that birds modified the same base structure of crocodilian scutes to form feathers--this is NOT the same thing as "crocodiles have modified feather genes". It more likely means feathers come from modified scute genes, the same base structure can be modified to form both. That being said, the presence of pennaceous feathers in ornithischians pretty much proves feathers of some kind are common to all dinosaurs, and probably ornithodirans ("pycnofibres" might be most parsimoniously assumed to be stage 1 feathers). MMartyniuk (talk) 17:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Ornithischians did not have pennaceous feathers.  But yeah, all ornithodirans likely had at least stage-1 feathers. — kwami (talk) 21:42, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends on how you define pennaceous I guess. They certainly didn't have vaned feathers (how some define "pennaceous"), but they had feathers with a central thickened shaft (rachis) and side branches (barbs), which is another definition of pennaceous but really would be called down since afaik they had open vanes with no barbules or hooklets. This is equivalent to Prum's stage III. For more, wait for the paper, should be out in a few months :D It should also be noted that Czerkas reported down-like branching feathers with a rachis on the brachiopatagium of Pterorhynchus. This was largely ignored/discounted due to Czerkas' idiosyncratic belief that pteorsaurs are some kind of apomorphic basal saurischians along with maniraptorans (weird para-version of BAND) and the fact that the specimen is technically still in (his own) private hands and isn't readily available for examination by other researchers. But given the recent discovery of the Siberian feathered ornithischians, it is no longer an incredible stretch to suppose pterosaurs had stage II or III feathers, so this should really be looked into again. MMartyniuk (talk) 12:55, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow.  Yeah, I'd call those pennaceous.  I had no idea about those discoveries.  Last I heard, ornithischians were only known to have stage-1-type feathers.  Our articles, however, contradict you.  Do they need to be corrected?  — kwami (talk) 15:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Not yet, right now we only have an abstract on an SVP talk, which was cancelled due to presenter illness. We can correct them once the paper is out and the inevitable media blitz has begun. (If you're curious, this image is based on the integument of the new species, though using Orodromeus skeletal anatomy. note the presence of both ratite-like feathers and croc-like scutes on the dorsal tail! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orodromeus_(pencil_2013).png).MMartyniuk (talk) 20:36, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: If that illustration is even close to accurate, it really would suggest feathers are basal to Dinosauria, and yeah, Pterorhynchus would seem to be of major importance.  I wonder why people aren't knocking at his door to examine it.  — kwami (talk) 20:03, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feathers the Standard? 

message: So now that were all clear on the feather issue, how about categorizing limb arrangment/structure?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.33.18.10 (talk) 05:08, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem here would be the definition of "hind wing." In current use, any fossils with feathers on the legs seems to be called "hind winged." Would we include Archaeopteryx? Rock Ptarmigan? If we restrict it to species with aerodynamic or lift-capable feathers on the metatarsus, it would be Microraptor and.... Microraptor. If we restrict it to animals with metatarsal feathers that may have been used for aerial maneuvering but not necessarily lift, we get into the controversy of how aerial any of these specific things really were. I'd probably not open that can of worms and simply add a sub-section to Bird flight for now. MMartyniuk (talk) 11:34, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of 4-Winged Dinosaurs or Dinosaurs with hind wings? 

message: While I'm not sure if Avifilopluma#Content provides any significant new insight and refs, since the possibility that feathers arose already with the ornithodirans is already noted in this article, Feather#Evolution certainly provides something new and surprising: even crocodilians have suppressed genes for feathers! Again, crocodilians turn out more similar to birds than traditionally assumed, once you stop thinking of them as only yet another group of reptiles and start to think of them as the closest remaining relatives of birds. (Besides, crocs rather than dinos make a much more plausible inspiration for mythical dragonlike monsters anyway. They strike me as the prime candidate for the closest modern-day analogue to the prehistoric saurian monsters of popular imagination.)
Makes you wonder about turtles; since they're now increasingly thought of as a sister group to crocodilians and birds, what surprises might their genome harbour? Associating crocodilians with feathers sounds no less nutty, after all. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:32, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: "even crocodilians have suppressed genes for feathers" Er, not quite. Crocodilians have feather-type keratins which are suppressed in favor as scutes in crocs, the same or similar keratins are expressed as feathers. This means that the ancestral archosaur integument probably had both kinds of keratin, not necessarily that that keratin was in the form of feathery structures (though it's possible). I clarified the text, it looks like whoever wrote that bit really misunderstood the study. MMartyniuk (talk) 18:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Primitive feather types 

message: I've noticed this section only details the argument that Sinosauropteryx's filaments are a preservation artifact, when we must discuss both sides of the argument in order to avoid bias. Unfortunately, I don't have any sources at hand, so someone else will have to change it. --24.141.115.104 (talk) 22:02, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  It seems like a BANDit/MANIAC snuck in without someone noticing and made that edit, I'll get right onto changing it. Thanks for that heads-up. --Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 20:52, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: "Genuine feathers?" section in need of improvement

message: "By the 1990s, most paleontologists considered birds to be surviving dinosaurs"
MOST paleontologists? Big citation required there. This article is a mess of biased rubbish. The similarities between dinosaurs and birds from a skeletal perspective have been well known for a while, however, the evidence of feathered "dinosaurs" (as in the variety familiar and beloved by children everywhere) is non-existent. Objectively, the "feathered" so-called evidence is not definitive and is open to controversy which this article mentions in passing as if it is the minority view. Here is the issue: Evolution theory. This is why this article exists and you all know it. There is a mob who DESIRES birds to be evolved dinosaurs and therefore they are making it so in ironically unscientific ways. Ironic because this cult of evolution theory often boast of and champion science otherwise. Misrepresenting actual science in the process in order to make their biased point. Unfortunately, critics of these people are often branded as religious creationists and dismissed. But bias is very real and very unscientific and this Internet cult of militant atheism is a disgrace to the scientific method.
Whether birds are related to and evolved from dinosaurs is besides the point. Misrepresenting the evidence in order to MAKE birds evolved from dinosaurs is what the issue is here. And if you take a step back and read this article objectively (or research the subject in question objectively) you will see that there is little in the way of actual science involved and a lot of bias in its place in agenda fashion which is no better (and the flip side of) dogmatic creationists. It's even gotten to the point where this cult of "atheos" (in Dawkins they trust...) is criticizing the production of Jurassic Park 4 for depicting dinosaurs without feathers. 
Will a serious editor(s) please take a look or two at this article with an objective eye and possibly see where in coming from? I know this isn't a forum and it's for improving the article. That's why I wrote this.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.137.101.166 (talk) 05:47, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism by bias 

message: The cladogram is quite outdated. In the current one, Coelophysoids are within Ceratosauria, Ovriaptorosauria is sister to Therizinosaurs, I don't even with the internal phylogeny of carnosauria, and deinonychosauria is used as monophyletic. These have all been rejected for quite awhile, odd that they're still present here.Capra walie (talk) 23:00, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Updated with one from 2013 based on a much more robust character set. Dinoguy2 (talk) 20:34, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad Cladogram 

message: The cladogram list them among Troodontidae, but in their respective articles they're shown as basal avialans, which is the result most recent phylogenetic analyses arrive at. Shouldn't we change this (for the sake of consistency)? JaneStillman (talk) 13:14, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The cladogram is credited to a 2013 paper which does not find ANY of the listed taxa to be troodontids, so somebody falsified this info. Dinoguy2 (talk) 12:56, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Aurornis]] and [[Anchiornis]] as troodontids 

message: At present, the text reads: "The leading dinosaur expert of the time, Richard Owen, disagreed, claiming Archaeopteryx as the first bird outside dinosaur lineage. For the next century, claims that birds were dinosaur descendants faded, with more popular bird-ancestry hypotheses including 'crocodylomorph' and 'thecodont' ancestors, rather than dinosaurs or other archosaurs." I think this should mention Gerhard Heilmann, as he also had influence on the popularity of the "Thecodont" theory. I also think this should remove the reference to "or other archosaurs," because all these proposed groups (birds, dinosaurs, crocodylians, "thecodonts," etc.) are archosaurs. 71.191.163.95 (talk) 22:33, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Thecodont" theory 

message: Now that feathers are known to have been extremely widespread within Dinosauria feathered dinosaurs are no longer "special" enough to justify treating them separately. Consequently, I think that the the general contents of this article would be more appropriate as part of a broader article on dinosaur integument and maybe some of the more specific discussions of early feathers as part of an article on the evolution of feathers. Abyssal (talk) 00:36, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe not special enough to experts, but certainly to most ordinary readers. The fact that we have something like Jurassic World shows that there is still a lot of people that need access to this knowledge specifically. But that doesn't rule out that an article about their integument in general could be made, I still have the old draft for "life appearance of dinosaurs" that I don't know what to do with... FunkMonk (talk) 13:00, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed move to "Dinosaur integument"

message: I think it appropriate now to include some sort of reference to Grallator. In the past, some have expressed skepticism (including the author of the blogpost linked below) but this was not a well-known finding, and still is not, and 20 years later, after two decades of frequent findings of feathered dinosaurs, it now seems almost unsurprising.http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/09/07/dyzio-feathered-dilophosaur/What do people think?
:If the proper sources can be cited, and it is still considered a feather impression, it would make sense to add. FunkMonk (talk) 11:17, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grallator Feather impressions 

message: Evolutionary paleontologist Darren Naish dared to express skepticism over quill knobs in a Concavenator from Spain. He wrote in a 2010 blog post, "Animals sometimes have weird, irregularly spaced tubercles arranged in lines on various of their bones, typically located on intermuscular lines (they presumably represent partially ossified attachment sites for tendinous sheets or similar structures): I've seen them on mammal boneshttp://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/09/09/concavenator-incredible-allosauroid/.65.255.88.233 (talk) 21:30, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2018.1485153?journalCode=ujvp20 Dinomarek (talk) 21:23, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quill Knobs on Concavenator and others. 

message: Tell me if I missed any.65.255.88.233 (talk) 23:00, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: The in-text and file/image cladograms seem to contradict each other. 
In the in-text coded cladogram, we show -
*Sciurumimus - filamentous feathers
*Tyrannosauroidea – plumulaceous feathers
*Compsognathidae – plumulaceous feathers
*Ornithomimosauria – plumulaceous feathers
*Alvarezsauridae – plumulaceous feathers
*Therizinosauroidea – plumulaceous feathers
which, if I understand 'plumulaceous' correctly, means all apart from Sciurumimus had down feathers.
However, in the image Dinosauria_phylogeny_and_integument.png, we show -
*Sciurumimus - monofilaments
*Tyrannosauroidea – tufts of filaments
*Compsognathidae – monofilaments
*Ornithomimosauria – open pennaceous feathers 
*Alvarezsauridae – monofilaments 
*Therizinosauroidea – brush-like filaments 
This description suggests Compsognathidae and Alvarezsauridae had filamentous feathers similar to Sciurumimus, and that Ornithomimosauria had more than just down.
So, does one or both need to be corrected, or do we just need to define our terms? I think it would probably be a good idea to add a section at feather where we define the different types, so that people can follow this article properly. — kwami (talk) 21:30, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to post something about this and someone fortunately had already noticed it. I followed the descriptions by Benton et al. (2019). Sinosauropteryx and Sinocalliopteryx are described as being covered in monofilaments, but Godefroit et al. (2013) say 'plumulaceous feathers' (presumably the same as 'tufts of filaments'). Interestingly, Currie & Chen (2001) said Sinosauropteryx had feathers with primary branching, which is equal to 'open pennaceous feathers' in Benton's nomenclature and Richard Prum's Stage III (that's "ratite"-like integument). The three basal maniraptorifom clades have poorly preserved integument, but Zelenitsky et al. (2012) consider "Ornithomimus" edmontonicus to have had pennaceous feathers. I would  like to divide 'closed pennaceous feathers' into two types - symmetrical/Stage IV (e.g. oviraptorosaurs, Anchiornis, hesperornithiforms, kakapos) and asymmetrical/Stage V (e.g. Microraptor, Archaeopteryx, flying birds) - but this is likely too complicated. Kiwi Rex (talk) 15:25, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I just updated the page using the new cladogram from Xu (2020), which comes with a better explanation of terms and the exact distribution of feather types and doubts regarding their indentification. Kiwi Rex (talk) 20:15, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cladograms seem to contradict each other 

message: I propose that we change the first image given the beliefs of the person who illustrated it, there are plenty more illustrations of non-avian dinosaurs we know for a fact had feathers in Wikimedia commons. Sauriazoicillus (talk) 07:48, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be wise to check if an image of a similar quality (because the one here is arguably quite good) is available. If so I don't see an issue with replacing the existing image. As a sidenote, this article looks like it could use some work. The Morrison Man (talk) 14:05, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely agree with that. Outside of the artist being quite yikes honestly, we should use at least a complete reconstruction like the ones below instead of a head that doesn't imply much about the postcranial anatomy of the specimens. 
File:Utahraptor Restoration.png
File:Achillobator reconstruction Flipped.png
File:Adasaurus Restoration.jpg
File:Velociraptor head.png
File:Velociraptor Restoration.png
File:Wulong reconstruction.png
File:Yurgovuchia.jpg
File:Zhongjianosaurus yangi.png
File:Bambiraptor reconstruction.jpg
File:Changyuraptor.jpg
File:Fred Wierum Microraptor.png
File:Epidendrosauruswiki1.png
File:Speculative mating display of Yi qi.png
 
Larrayal (talk) 01:22, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  First Image 

message: Here's the edit in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Feathered_dinosaur&oldid=1074180780. (I imagine there's a more wiki-like way to link to it, but I'm tired / lazy / inexperienced and this is my compromise.)
Apart from breaking the cladogram - I'm not sure how, or I'd fix it, but perhaps something to do with layout? - it also removed some text about phylogenetic bracketing while leaving the text which mentions the term itself.
Those are the most egregious things I noticed, but the edit removed a lot of stuff which had either old citation-needed tags or no citations at all. I feel that at least some of that stuff probably did belong in the article and it would have been better to find relevant citations or just leave the tags where they were (/ add new ones where missing), but maybe that's a matter of taste.
Anyway, at least some of it ought to be fixed. Figuring out how much (and how) involves judgment that I currently lack - see previous comment re: tired / lazy / inexperienced.
Cheers, Robin S (talk) 05:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cladogram (and other things) broken by an edit from 2022