n our evolving understanding of dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex has acquired a new persona in recent decades. It’s always been the imperious, curiously agile two-ton gargantua, personified as a gaunt, grizzle-faced gunfighter at the dark end of the bar, a soulless creature that lived to 30 and possessed a keen sense of smell, good eyesight, surprisingly pliable skin and banana-sized teeth. Add a taste for Triceratops, which it ate by pulling off the head then using its smaller front teeth to nip the soft flesh behind the frill.
Its newer persona suggests a softer side, a demon looking creature but finally not a psychopath, merely a misunderstood everyman with feathers. Literally feathering on different parts of its body, mainly on its back, like a mane perhaps, wherever it was, an “extravagance” in evolutionary terms. Although still somewhat speculative for T. rex, feathers are definitively found in close relatives, including the 30-foot-long Zhuchengtyrannus, which lived in China. Paleontologists have found intact downy feathers of different colors, and speculate that while feathers obviously didn’t portend flight, or a show of intimidation to predators since there weren’t any for T. rex, the feathering may have been a display, a peacock affect, as though to say, “Hey, how sexy a gal or guy am I?” Incidentally, some of the biggest T. rexes ever found were female.
