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Yutyrannus was a 30-foot tyrannosaur covered in feathers.

A cousin of T. rex, the size of a bus, wearing a coat of fuzz.

2 min read
Yutyrannus was a 30-foot tyrannosaur covered in feathers.
THE FULL STORY

In 2012, scientists in China unearthed something that changed the way we think about T. rex. Yutyrannus was a 30-foot, 3,000-pound tyrannosaur - a direct cousin of T. rex - and it had clear evidence of feathers preserved alongside the skeleton. The longest were up to 8 inches.

That made Yutyrannus the biggest feathered animal known to science, by far. No modern bird gets anywhere close. Suddenly, the leathery T. rex of older illustrations started to look a lot less likely. If a 30-foot tyrannosaur cousin had feathers, maybe T. rex did too - at least when young, or in cooler climates.

The feathers probably weren’t for flight (Yutyrannus couldn’t fly). They were more like a coat - keeping body heat in, or possibly for display, or both. A giant fluffy theropod.

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