A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 484; no. 7392; pp. 92 - 95
• Main Authors: Xu, Xing, Wang, Kebai, Zhang, Ke, Ma, Qingyu, Xing, Lida, Sullivan, Corwin, Hu, Dongyu, Cheng, Shuqing, Wang, Shuo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 05.04.2012; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/181/414; 704/2151/213; Animals; Animals, Fossil; Biological Evolution; Body Size; China; Cold; Cretaceous; Dinosaurs; Dinosaurs - anatomy & histology; Dinosaurs - classification; Discovery and exploration; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Feathers - anatomy & histology; Fossils; Humanities and Social Sciences; Jurassic; letter; multidisciplinary; Paleontology; Phylogeny; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Skeleton; Skull - anatomy & histology; Vertebrate paleontology; Liaoning China; Far East; Asia; China; Northern China; Mesozoic; skulls; Chordata; skeletons; morphometry; Cretaceous; ontogeny; Vertebrata; discoveries; Lower Cretaceous; feathers; new taxa; Reptilia; growth; Dinosauria; Phanerozoic; Tetrapoda
• DOI: 10.1038/nature10906
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687

The discovery of a new species of Tyrannosaurus relative from the Early Cretaceous of China, some 125 million years old—the largest feathered creature known, living or extinct—has implications for early feather evolution. T. rex 's giant feathered friends Tyrannosaurus rex and its gigantic cousins lived at the close of the Cretaceous period, around 70 million years ago. Earlier relatives were thought to have been much smaller than T. rex , but recent finds from the early Cretaceous of China have had body lengths of up to 10 metres. Three 125-million-year-old specimens of a new tyrannosauroid species from China add a twist to this story: not only were the creatures large (the adult may have weighed around 1,400 kg), but they were also feathered. This basal tyrannosauroid is the largest feathered creature known, living or extinct, and raises interesting questions about dinosaur development and metabolism. Numerous feathered dinosaur specimens have recently been recovered from the Middle–Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous deposits of northeastern China, but most of them represent small animals 1 . Here we report the discovery of a gigantic new basal tyrannosauroid, Yutyrannus huali gen. et sp. nov., based on three nearly complete skeletons representing two distinct ontogenetic stages from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, China. Y. huali shares some features, particularly of the cranium, with derived tyrannosauroids 2 , 3 , but is similar to other basal tyrannosauroids 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 in possessing a three-fingered manus and a typical theropod pes. Morphometric analysis suggests that Y. huali differed from tyrannosaurids in its growth strategy 13 , 14 . Most significantly, Y. huali bears long filamentous feathers, thus providing direct evidence for the presence of extensively feathered gigantic dinosaurs and offering new insights into early feather evolution.