Jiragozira14 wrote:They''re almost certainly reticula; which are secondarily derived from feathers. So even if T.rex was mostly covered in these, that's still not "true" scales, like those of snakes and lizards.
They look the same as every other dinosaur skin impression that's been found, so unless you're suggesting things like hadrosaurs, sauropods, and ankylosaurs didn't have "true" scales either, I really don't see your point here aside from just grasping at straws and looking for a loophole to not call dinosaurs scaly.
Unrelated:
I've said my piece on this in the past (though I don't think in this thread), but seeing it in the Saurian demo triggered me again: The Raptor Prey Restraint theory for dromaeosaurs is completely stupid and doesn't make any actual sense on numerous levels.
First, the entire premise behind why it was thought up in the first place is... deeply flawed, to put it nicely. From what I remember, it was basically used to explain how flapping developed in birds as well as provide an explanation for how dromaeosaurs killed prey because they were "poorly equipped" to do so otherwise. I don't think I even need to explain how flat-out stupid the second half of that is. The flapping part is just as problematic. Aside from the fact that powered flight via flapping developed independently in two other vertebrate groups (pterosaurs and bats)
without being a method of maintaining balance while restraining prey, there's two other big issues with it. The most blatant is that birds were around before dromaeosaurs. The second is that the earliest dromaeosaurs were small tree dwellers that wouldn't have needed to hunt that way in the first place because they would have eaten bugs and small lizards and such.
Secondly, it doesn't make sense from a mechanical standpoint. Contrary to what the paper proposing the theory suggests, dromaeosaur feet simply aren't built like those of modern birds of prey. Yes, dromaeosaurs could indeed flex their toes to grasp very small prey items like lizards and small mammals. They could not, however, use them to grip prey of any decent size like what would require the "ride to exhaustion" technique of the RPR theory. The reason modern birds of prey can do this is because 1) they have four toes which articulate in opposition to each other and 2) all four of said toes have long, sharp claws designed for piercing. Dromaeosaur feet had neither of these adaptations. Without the fourth toe to work in opposition to the other three, the toes would be unable to securely grip an object or animal larger than what those three toes could fully envelop. On top of that, only one of the three usable toes of a dromaeosaur's foot had a claw designed for piercing. So if a dromaeosaur leapt onto the back of a prey item large enough to struggle against its body weight and attempted to ride out said struggling, it would promptly lose its grip and probably fall flat on its face. Not only would it only have a total of two claws to pierce the prey instead of the eight of a modern bird of prey, but those two claws wouldn't even be able to pierce as deeply in the first place because of the aforementioned lack of opposing force from other toes.
Thirdly, it doesn't fit with the physiology of the rest of the dromaeosaur body. Specifically the hand claws. The hand claws of most dromaeosaurs are comparable in size to their famed sickle claws. And yet this theory proposes that they were used for... absolutely nothing? That's pretty absurd. Not only would it be wasteful to not make use of these claws, but their presence would be flat-out detrimental to the RPR method. Birds lost their hand claws for a reason: they make flapping harder because they add weight to the wing.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
we have direct fossil evidence of a dromaeosaur not utilizing this method while attacking a large prey item. Now I'm not saying that situation was a typical one by any means. The fact that the Protoceratops had the Velociraptor's arm in its mouth is proof enough that the hunt hadn't gone as intended. But it goes back to my previous point. The fossil clearly shows the Velociraptor using its hands to grip onto the Protoceratops and using only its sickle claw to stab while the other two toes on its foot are curled back out of the way. Furthermore, the fact that its arm is in the Protoceratops's mouth is evidence that it was using its hands offensively, because if it was just using them to flap to maintain balance, its arm wouldn't have been anywhere near the Protoceratops's mouth in the first place.
So yeah. Basically nothing about the Raptor Prey Restraint theory makes any sense, and there's no actual evidence to support it in any way. Why it's gained so much support in the paleontological community genuinely baffles me.
