Did Some Dinos Have Feathers? And Other Questions

Hello Ian, thanks for your questions! I was homeschooled through 7th grade, and I had lots of questions about dinosaurs at your age too. Check out the information below, and hopefully it will help!

“Did some dinosaurs, such as Dromaeosaurus and Troodon, have feathers?”

Dromaeosaurus and Troodon specifically have not been found with any evidence of feathers. But some animals classified in the same families (Dromaeosauridae and Troodontidae) have been found with feathers preserved (such as Microraptor and Jinfengopteryx). These are clear feathers with branching structures (a vane and barbs).

So far, we have only found actual feathers on animals that have other bird characteristics, such as a swivel wrist (indicating a wing) and a short, thin tail (indicating birdlike walking). Evolutionists claim that non-branching structures called filaments are also feathers, but those appear to be something like collagen fibers in the skin.

So far, I don’t believe we've found any convincing evidence that dinosaurs had feathers. Supposed “feathered dinosaurs” are either dinosaurs found with filaments, or birds that have been misidentified as dinosaurs, such as Microraptor, Jinfengopteryx, and Caudipteryx. This makes sense because dinosaurs (land animals) and birds (flying animals) were created on different days of creation week, so we would expect them to have significant differences in their anatomy.

Check out my video below with some more in-depth information and visuals to illustrate what I mean:

“Are human fossils ‘speciated’ like Homo naledi, or Homo neanderthalensis vs. Homo sapiens?”

While Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus have been given their own species names based on evolutionary assumptions, they are fully human, just like us. So no speciation there.

Homo naledi is a different case. It probably is not human, instead being placed in the human genus to further evolutionary ideas. The bones that have been discovered more closely resemble modern apes than humans.

Homo neanderthalensis (right) were fully human just like us.
CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“Is Baptornis kind of like a long-necked penguin?”

Baptornis is definitely a bird, so you're on the right track there. But it looks much more like a modern-day cormorant than a penguin. Cormorants are long-necked diving birds that can actually swim on the surface and underwater. The only big difference I see is that Baptornis actually has teeth in its beak, which we don’t find in living birds, but is quite common in extinct birds.

A modern-day cormorant
Photo by Hongbin on Unsplash

“Did Velociraptor have a claw on its second toe that could ‘flick out’?”

Velociraptor (and other dromaeosaurs) did have an especially large claw on their second toe. The joints on that toe have a very large range of motion, which means they could raise it up especially high. This is confirmed by fossilized dromaeosaur tracks that show they walked on their third and fourth toes, raising their third one off the ground.

Some studies claim that they also had very strong feet to be able to grasp and squeeze tightly with those claws. This is much like what we see with raptor birds today (hawks, eagles, and owls). I also have a video talking about Velociraptor here:

Thanks for writing in! When we interpret God’s world using God’s Word, everything makes so much more sense. I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

Keep the faith,
Joel

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