Re: Cold winters for Jehol dinosaurs during Early Cretaceous explain feathers?

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

On Wed, Mar 9th, 2011 at 2:37 PM, "bh480@scn.org" <bh480@scn.org> wrote:

> This news story is out in French and Spanish news sources, but I haven't
> found an English language version yet. I'll post a link and the full
> abstract as soon as the article is available on the PNAS site.
> 
> Romain Amiot, Xu Wang, Zhonghe Zhou, Xiaolin Wang, Eric Buffetaut,
> Christophe Lécuyer, Zhongli Ding, Frédéric Fluteau, Tsuyoshi Hibino, Nao
> Kusuhashi, Jinyou Mo, Varavudh Suteethorn, Yuanqing Wang, Xing Xu, and
> Fusong Zhang (2011). 
> Oxygen isotopes of East Asian dinosaurs reveal exceptionally cold Early
> Cretaceous climates. 
> Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (advance publication)
> 
> 
> http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/communique/2125.htm
> 
> A team of French, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai scientists says that oxygen
> istopes from teeth and bones of dinosaurs, mammals, and reptiles that lived
> in the Jehol region during the Early Cretaceous indicate that the local
> climate was temperate, not tropical, and more similar to the modern Beijing
> region. During the cold winters,  turtles and lizards hiberated. The
> feathers on dinosaurs would have helped keep them warm during the colder
> months.

Babelfish does a reasonable job of translating the French into English, 
although there were a few 
hiccups. While discussing feather types:

"(these structures could take various aspects, energy of the filament to the 
?true feathers?, while 
passing by the sleeping bag and the ?protoplumes?)."

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

-- 
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Dann Pigdon
Spatial Data Analyst               Australian Dinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia               http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj
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