Mutants In The News — The Dread Yetisaurus Edition

Yesterday, the dino-rific Love In The Time Of Chasmosaurs blog brought attention to articles in Nature and Discover Magazine about Yutyrannus, a feathered theropod that may have been the abominable snowman of the terrible lizard kingdom:  shaggy, carnivorous, and cold-loving.

Chasmosaur's creator David Orr's favorite bit mirrors mine, involving speculation that the "feathers might have been a winter coat...[as] Yutyrannus lived at a time when the average yearly temperature was a nippy 10 degrees Celsius.  Maybe it was the tyrannosaur equivalent of woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos, whose shaggy coats protected them during the Ice Age.

'The idea of woolly tyrannosaurs stalking colder climates in the Cretaceous is kinda mind blowing.'"

Yes, yes it is.

And just remember, folks:  no matter what the fossil record tells you, we here at A Field Guide To Doomsday did it first.