Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 26/99) - We may never look at the terrifying tyrannosaur the same again.

There is evidence which suggests this giant carnivore, as well as the other meat-eating dinosaurs, may have had, well, feathers.

As for what T-rex might look like covered in soft fluffy down -- there goes that killing machine image -- check out the November issue of National Geographic. An artist has feathered a baby T-rex. It's kinda cute.

"We have no proof (that T-rex was feathered)," Phillip Currie, guest speaker at the Geoscience Forum at the Explorer Hotel Wednesday, said.

"(But) T-rex has the potential to be a feathered animal," he said. The rationale for the suggestion is that T-rex is part of the same branch on the dinosaur tree as the feathered dinosaurs.

Along that same branch the small and swift velociraptor is also found. That means it too may have been a feathered dino.

Dinosaurs' feathers may have come from scales.

This also means we may not be able to look at birds the same again either. If the meat-eating dinosaurs were feathered, it may mean today's birds are descendants of dinosaurs.

But the implications go way beyond perception.

"In that case, we have 10,000 living species of dinosaurs today," Currie said.

Other evidence that strongly suggests birds are descendants of dinosaurs comes from a raptor-like dinosaur which was found with eggs. It was thought the dinosaur died while attempting to steel the eggs.

But, as it turned out, it was brooding eggs, just like modern birds. The embryos turned out to be the same kind of raptor.

This "egg thief" turned out to be an egg layer.

The argument that birds came from dinosaurs is currently the number one argument in paleotology, Currie, who has published dozens of articles and 10 books, said. Some of his field work includes trips to China where some feathered species of dinosaurs have been found by farmers.

Turns out the business of selling dinosaur fossils is big business. The fossils end up on the black market and can fetch $30,000, he said.

Currie told of one farmer who found a fossilized feathered dinosaur.

Turns out the farmer sold the top half -- the upper plate of the rock with the fossil impression -- to one buyer and the bottom half to another. Who knows, we may soon see companies attempt something similar.