Why we think dinosaurs were covered with scales

It seems that the dinosaurs, which have long been portrayed as menacing and scaly giant lizards, were actually more like birds. But not everyone is ready to accept their new image. Mary Colwell writes about it.

“All brontosaurs are thin at one end, much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the other end,” proclaimed the scrupulous Miss Ann Elk in a famous episode of the comedy show Monty Python more than 40 years ago.

This observation has not yet been refuted, but many other ideas about dinosaurs have changed. The word "dinosaur" combines two Greek words: "dinos", which means formidable or huge, and "saurus" - a lizard. The term was first used in 1842 by paleontologist Richard Aries, who saw similarities between huge fossil bones and the skeletons of modern reptiles.

He suggested: "Select a distinct tribe or subspecies of fossil lizard-like reptiles for which I propose the name Dinosauria."

Conceptual art depiction of a feathered velociraptor that attacks the ancestor of modern birds, Archeopteryx Gigantoraptor, lived 70,000,000 years ago in what is now Mongolia and was about 8 meters long.

Scientists continued to dig up bones, collect skeletons, and gradually the dinosaurs moved from a dark past into the shining light of scientific knowledge, in particular newfangled geology. They showed people a picture of the world, both terrible and amazing. Some of them were so huge that they would look at modern houses from above. Others had gigantic teeth, larger and more dangerous than any other species. These monsters haunted the fossil hunters.

Together with Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkings, the famous British sculptor, Mr. Aries built a Victorian "Jurassic Park" near the Crystal Palace in London. This park still exists today. Life-sized sculptures of dinosaurs crawl out of the water and scatter among the plants - so huge that Aries defiantly hosted a British Association for the Advancement of Science dinner party inside the iguanodont.

But even in those early days there was no certainty on many issues. Scientists doubted the posture of the iguanodont. Or were his legs upright, like an elephant's, supporting his body at a height from the ground, or were they splayed out, like a crocodile's? No one knew for sure, so they made both models. And both are wrong. We now know that his hind limbs were larger and stronger than his forelimbs, and he often stood up on them vertically, especially while running. Moreover, horn-like remains were often found near the bones of the iguanodont. It was believed that these were horns like rhinos, and in models they were attached along the nose. But recent finds prove that they were actually sharp claws that grew on the thumbs and were probably used in battle.

Caudipteryx's feathers gave it thermal protection and may have made it attractive to other individuals. In the US state of Connecticut, paw prints with three fingers, similar to the tracks of a large bird, were found on sandstone. At first, experts claimed that they were left by a fossil turkey or a bird like a stork. The geologist Edward Hitchcock was fascinated by these "turkey tracks" and therefore wrote the beautiful and mystical poem "The Sandstone Bird", published in the Knickerbocker magazine in 1836.

In it, he asks this bird to appear from the cliff: “Bird of sandstone, appear From the original prison! Show sharp claws, unfold strong wings! And walk on the sand, as in ancient times. Adam, you were, reigned from ancient times. Therefore, hear my prayer and appear in God's world!”

In the poem, a giant bird responds to requests and appears to the geologist author and his colleagues from the 19th century. He sees with disappointment that now the earth is ruled by insignificant people, and exclaims: “This is a place that is doomed to death, Not the paradise that I once loved so much. These people are dissatisfied with nothing, They hate both the land and the brothers. I do not want and cannot live here. I will find my peace with the dead."

By 1870, scientists had already proven that the footprints belonged to small three-toed dinosaurs that moved on their hind limbs. Feathered Dromaeosaurus is a small, swift-footed dinosaur found in China. Many intellectual copies were broken in the corridors of paleontology institutes over the years, while new evidence accumulated dinosaurs were very different in size and behavior and generally more like birds than amphibians.

“All the evidence indicates they were warm-blooded,” says Mike Benton, professor of paleontology at the University of Bristol. “If you look at the structure of their bones, you will see that the bone tissue grew and was replaced in the same way that it occurs in mammals and birds ... Many of the dinosaurs - if not all - had feathers.” Feathers were often red, white or black.

Anchiornis is a small, feathered, non-avian dinosaur that lived about 160 million years ago. It may be hard to come to terms with this, but the royal tyrannosaurus rex, a toothy predator with a bad temper, probably sported bright plumage. It is also possible that Dippe the dinosaur, the huge reconstruction of the diplococcus skeleton that has delighted visitors to the Natural History Museum in London for a hundred years, was soft and fluffy.

“Small and medium sized dinosaurs were all covered in feathers, while giant dinosaurs lost their feathers as they matured,” Benton explains.

Fans of old cinema will remember the famous scene from One Million Years B.C. (1966), where Raquel Welch, wearing nothing but a fur bikini, runs across the desert from a huge, slobbering dinosaur. Would this scene be so scary if that monster was feathered?

And also in the case of the Velociraptors from the Jurassic World movie, why don't they have feathers? Will Hollywood finally take into account the new achievements of science and make its dinosaurs more like birds than uglier lizards?

“I don't think Hollywood would go for that,” says Professor John Maoilearca, professor of film and television art at Kingston University. “They wouldn't allow birds as monsters. Feathers are something comical.

It seems that we ourselves want to see dinosaurs as formidable lizards, at least in scary movies. Or maybe in the future they will change the roles of monsters to comic characters. Perhaps Dino, the pet of the Flintstone family from the animated series of the same name, actually reflects the nature of his ancestors better.

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