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An article in BBC Magazine notes how it now seems dinosaurs were more like birds than lizards.
"Dinosaurs are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle and thin again at the other end," declared the pedantic Miss Anne Elk in the famous Monty Python sketch more than 40 years ago. Miss Elk's observation still holds fast, but many of our other opinions about these giants of the Jurassic have changed.
The word "dinosaur" is made from the combination of two Greek words, "deinos" which means terrible or fearfully great, and "saur" which means lizard. It was first used in 1842 by the palaeontologist Richard Owen who saw some similarities between huge fossil bones and the skeletons of living reptiles. He suggested "establishing a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria".
[...] Much intellectual blood has been shed in the corridors of palaeontological research institutes over the years as evidence has been amassed to show that dinosaurs were highly varied in size and behaviour, and more like birds than reptiles. "All the evidence is that dinosaurs were warm-blooded," says Mike Benton, professor of palaeontology at Bristol University. "When you look at the bone histology [structure] you see they had growth patterns and replacement of bone very like mammals and birds... Many if not most dinosaurs had feathers." Many of those feathers were coloured ginger and white and black.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:14PM
I don't picture dinos with scales. I don't guess I can trace how, why, and when I decided that dinos didn't have scales, but I just don't see them in my mind with scales. Feathers, possibly, scales, no. And, of course, not all dinos were feathered - but I couldn't begin to guess which were, and which were not. I don't equate a reptilian appearance with having scales. Especially since just as many dinos have a bird-like appearance - why would a bird-like creater want to carry that exra mass aloft? Hell, birds opted for hollow bones to save on mass!
(some pedantist will show up soon to tell me that the birds didn't just decide to have hollow bones - but to save him the trouble, I'll ask ahead of time, "How do you know that for sure?")
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:54PM
Because when they were old enough to make that decision themselves, they were already too old to change their bones. So it's clear the parents decided for their children. ;-)