this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 hour ago

From what i've seen it's basically 50/50 if any one species had a significant amount of feathers, but feathers do seem to have existed in the earliest dinosaur ancestor so it could maybe potentially show up in any species.

Then you can get more detailed and memorize which kinds of dinosaur had what kind of feather covering, like sauropods seem to at most have some quills and similar decorations, while dromaeosaurs (dakotaraptor, velociraptor, etc) were basically big murder birds with full on wings.

But of course even within clades there could be significant difference: T.rex seems to have been, uh, covered in straight up skin like a giant plucked chicken.. but at least some of its relatives were mostly covered in feathers.