Well, this is rad. And adorable. Brian Switek, whom we adore, commissioned a fuzzy juvenile sauropod from Niroot, whom we adore, for his (Brian’s) upcoming book, My Beloved Brontosaurus , which I am gearing up to adore. And here is the result, which I adore, borrowed with permission from Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs. There is much to like here. Here’s my rundown: Small forefeet that are the correct shape: good.

That clanking sound you just heard was pretty much the entire field of paleontology evolutionary biology wired humanity dropping a solid gold brick: Tianyulong , a basal ornithischian from (where else?) China, has been found with dino-fuzz (Zheng et al. 2009). Not exactly protofeathers, but pretty darn similar. And if they’re in theropods and ornithischians, they were probably primitive for Dinosauria (at least;