Quote from: DoomRulz on Mar 21, 2013, 06:20:57 PMBaby theropods are said to have had downy feathers covering their body to maintain body heat at a young age. Larger theropods like T.Rex probably didn't have feathers but I don't know of any study that said otherwise. I think right now at least, the consensus is that the only theropods that for sure had feathers in their entire life time were dromaeosaurids.
As for ceratopsians, this will blow you away if you didn't already know it. Check out #1 on the list. Yeah.
That's actually a really good article. Nothing on there I'd argue with or get pedantic about (which may be a first), and has several things I didn't know, too. Cheers!
Dromaeosaurids, like Tyrannosaurids, are assumed to be feathered as long as they're not so large as to overheat from it, which as I've said earlier may have been a concern with the largest deinonychosaurids (meaning a JP-sized animal may indeed have been bald). Climate's also an issue though - in modern animals there's great disparity in the insulation between mammoths and elephants, and bengal and siberian tigers, and this was also the case with Yutyrannus, a fluffy mid-size tyrannosaurid which apparently inhabited a cooler region. Rexy, as I said earlier, had unadorned scaly skin in the impressions we've discovered, but I'd assume infants for all these genera would be insulated as they wouldn't have the bulk required to internally retain heat. Otherwise they'd need round-the-clock care (as in penguins) or live in an extremely hot, stable climate.
Actually, now I come to think of it, that does render one JP animal almost certainly inaccurate in terms of feathers - the baby rex. Personally I think Gallimimus would have been partially feathered, but it's large enough to be debatable.
Compsognathus' scaly skin actually surprised me, as I'd assume every coelurosaur group to have some form of feathery insulation if size and climate permitted, but according to Wikipedia there's a possibility it may have had an uneven distribution of protofeathers.
