Talk:Equinox Dragon/@comment-50.46.112.25-20120920213059/@comment-81.132.101.5-20120920215237

Sakura & Ice got me both of mine. No luck yet with the (limited) Equinox dragon !!! People have a lot of other stresses in their lives but I suppose the game would be totally unexciting if Bus-Size Dinosaurs, as Fuzzy as Chicks Brian Choo An artist’s impression of Yutyrannus huali, a giant, previously unrecognized dinosaur. The name of the species means “beautiful feathered tyrant.” By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Published: April 4, 2012 141 Comments RECOMMEND TWITTER LINKEDIN COMMENTS (141) SIGN IN TO E-MAIL PRINT REPRINTS SHARE Fossils discovered in northeastern China of a giant, previously unrecognized dinosaur show that it is the largest known feathered animal, living or extinct, scientists report. RSS Feed

Get Science News From The New York Times » Enlarge This Image Zang Hailong A Yutyrannus skull. Enlarge This Image Zang Hailong Yutyrannus tail feathers. Readers’ Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (141) » Although several species of dinosaurs with feathers have already been uncovered in the rich fossil beds of Liaoning Province, the three largely complete 125-million-year-old specimens are by far the largest. The adult was at least 30 feet long and weighed a ton and a half, about 40 times the heft of Beipiaosaurus, the largest previously known feathered dinosaur. The two juveniles were a mere half ton each.

The new species was a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, the mighty predator that lived 60 million years later, at the end of the dinosaur era. The scaly T. rex apparently did not go in for feathers.

In an article in the journal Nature, published online Wednesday, Chinese and Canadian paleontologists said the discovery provided the first “direct evidence for the presence of extensively feathered gigantic dinosaurs” and offered “new insights into early feather evolution.”

Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, who was the lead author of the paper, said in a statement that it was “possible that feathers were much more widespread, at least among meat-eating dinosaurs, than most scientists would have guessed even a few years ago.”

Dr. Xu said the feathers were simple filaments, more like the fuzzy down of a modern baby chick than the stiff plumes of an adult bird. Such insubstantial feathers, not to mention the animal’s huge size, would have made flight impossible. The feathers’ most important function was probably as insulation.

The species has been named Yutyrannus huali, which means “beautiful feathered tyrant” in a combination of Latin and Mandarin.

Mark A. Norell, a curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, who had no part in the research, said the findings were significant because they swept aside a longstanding argument that perhaps dinosaurs had feathers only when they were small and shed them as they grew.

Corwin Sullivan, a Canadian paleontologist affiliated with the Beijing institute and an author of the report, noted that the idea of primitive feathers for insulation was not new.

“However, large-bodied animals typically can retain heat quite easily, and actually have more of a potential problem with overheating,” Dr. Sullivan said. “That makes Yutyrannus, which is large and downright shaggy, a bit of a surprise.”

The researchers suggested that the climate might have been cooler when this feathered giant lived than it was when T. rex roamed in the late Cretaceous period. Not necessarily, said Dr. Norell, who pointed out that large, hairy mammals like giraffes and wildebeest, perhaps analogous to feathered dinosaurs, live today in hot latitudes.

Another possible explanation, offered by the authors of the journal article, is that the feathers were not widely distributed over the dinosaurs’ bodies, and so their function as display plumage cannot be ruled out. Yet the researchers noted several times that the feather covering was extensive and “densely packed,” resembling some recent discoveries of fossil birds “that undoubtedly had plumage covering most of the body.”

“This is a great time to be a dinosaur paleontologist,” said Dr. Norell, whose research concentrates on fossils from China and the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. “The feathered dinosaurs show how the whole conception of dinosaurs has really changed in the last 15 years.”

A version of this article appeared in print on April 5, 2012, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Bus-Size Dinosaurs, Fuzzy as Chicks. 141 Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article. ALLREADER PICKSNYT PICKS Comments Closed

LarryLondonNYT Pick Has there been a definitive and agreed solution to the question of how dinosaurs could get so big? it appears that under current conditions of gravity and atmosphere, creatures of that size simply could not exist on earth - muscle fibre would not be able to lift that weight, hearts would not be able to achieve the necessary blood pressure, etc. There are all sorts of theories out there about Saturn and Jupiter being in a different place, the atmosphere being different, etc., but it none of it seems to be from peer-reviewed journals that I can find.

Of course I'm sure someone will say it's because the Democratic Party hadn't been invented yet to impose all those regulations that restrict growth... April 4, 2012 at 9:07 p.m.RECOMMENDED15

Michael in VermontNorth Clarendon, VTNYT Pick Two years ago my medical mission team and I were boating up Rio Las Piedras in the Madre de Dios district in the Amazon jungle of Peru. It was early in the morning and there was a heavy fog on the river. We passed a series of fallen trees along the side of the river upon which were about 200 hoatzins (pronounced the same as Watson). The hoatzins are they most primitive birds on the planet and have no other living relatives in the evolutionary chain. They have two usable claws on the forward edge of each wing. They are almost identical, if not completely identical, to the Archaeopteryx which lived about 130 million years ago. You can imagine what a thrill it was for us to see these birds and to get close enough to get some great photographs of them (we cut our engine and coasted up right next to them). They are not rare. They live throughout the Amazon and Orinoco basins of South America, an area larger than the continental United States. But they spend the entire day eating leaves in the foliage and so are rarely seen, especially such that they can be photographed. The Archaeopteryx has recently been reclassified from bird to dinosaur and so it it's logical that the Hoatzins are also dinosaurs - the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. April 4, 2012 at 9:13 p.m.RECOMMENDED59

Diana MosesArlington, MA Verified NYT Pick It's interesting how we have so much trouble holding hypotheses in our heads as tentative -- we seem to want everything to be definitive, whether in medicine or here, interpreting fossils. I think that gives the growth of our understanding the feel of lurching, at least to me sometimes. April 5, 2012 at 1:50 a.m.RECOMMENDED13 READ MORE COMMENTS Comments are no longer being accepted. Please submit a letter to the editor for print consideration. Get Free E-mail Alerts on These Topics

Dinosaurs	Feathers Paleontology	Science and Technology Ads by Google	what's this? Classic Red London Buses Corporate Bus Advertising Available All Events Catered For www.london-heritage-travel.com Log In With Facebook Log in to see what your friends are sharing on nytimes.com. Privacy Policy | What’s This? What’s Popular Now

Nora Ephron, Essayist, Screenwriter and Director, Dies at 71

Nora Ephron, Essayist, Screenwriter and Director, Dies at 71 Advertise on NYTimes.com

MOST E-MAILEDMOST VIEWED 1.	MARK BITTMAN Which Diet Works? 2.	NORA EPHRON | 1941-2012 Writer and Filmmaker With a Genius for Humor 3.	WELL Combating Acid Reflux May Bring Host of Ills 4.	PRACTICAL TRAVELER Frequent Flier Pros to the Rescue 5.	RESTAURANT REVIEW Thailand Extends to Brooklyn 6.	America’s Cup Updates As It Trawls for Viewers 7.	Hillary Clinton’s Last Tour as a Rock-Star Diplomat 8.	THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN The Fear Factor 9.	WELL Finding a Sustainable Running Stride 10.	STILL LIFE Grazing in the Stacks of Academe Go to Complete List » Show My Recommendations

Fighting cancer, and myself ALSO IN HEALTH » Self-interest meets mandate Before birth, dad's ID

ADVERTISEMENTS It's Just the Ticket for Everything Theater Ads by Google	what's this? Canterbury Christchurch university open day visit us to find your perfect course www.canterbury.ac.uk Animal Feed Production We produce and market your brand. Get yourself informed now! www.landguth.de/international/ Worming Made Easy Mixing wormer into feed is a pain! Buy feed with wormer pre-mixed in. www.farmandpetplace.co.uk could get every new dragon at the first try and iltimately it's only a game ! However, if you've been playing it for a longish time and you have always managed to get a pair of every dragon which has been released since you started (I missed bone, love, clover, leap year and a second bloom) then it can be a bit annoying when too many dragons are released at once when you are still trying to get older dragons.