鈥淣O FEATHERS. #JP4鈥� The enigmatic tweet by Colin Trevorrow, the director of Jurassic Park 4, has riled dino buffs. It suggests his CGI giants will be bald, flying in the face of science.
Since the early 1990s, when the first Jurassic Park came out, evidence has mounted that many of its lizard-skinned stars in fact wore feathery bling. The turkey-sized Velociraptor and at least some of the gigantic tyrannosaurs had feathers. A few dinosaurs even had iridescent ones.
Palaeontologist Darren Naish, of the University of Southampton, UK, isn鈥檛 impressed with Trevorrow鈥檚 choice. 鈥淚鈥檓 pissed off by a disregard for knowledge,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t helps perpetuate the notion that dinosaurs were all scaly dragons, alien and unlike modern animals.鈥�
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Trevorrow has remained tight-lipped, so we can only speculate as to why he is sticking with bald beasts. Though tricky to render, feathers are well within the powers of CGI.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淔eather buster鈥�