Scientists Think T-Rex Was Not Fluffy. They Need to Go To Some Ball...

Former FBI Director James Comey was on TV today, using the term “no fuzz” in his testimony to Congress. Apparently, he’s not the only one throwing around these ideas. According to scientists who have conducted new research, Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs probably were not fluffy.

While some fuzzy, fluffy, feathered dinosaurs have been found, scientists who analyzed several existing patches of skin from T-Rex specimens and close relatives found scaly skin. “This doesn’t rule out feathers,” said a paleontologist who was quoted in the Washington Post this week, “but it does suggest they lacked a full coat.” References below

Trex CC.png
Creative Commons via Wikimedia by LadyofHats.

Oh really? No fluff? Those scientists haven’t been to many sports games lately, have they? The T-Rex skin that they looked at was 65 million years old. See if I have any hair left by then. Since no T-Rexes are alive today, scientists can’t be completely sure what their skin looked like.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to some modern day dinosaurs who work hard and play hard. You don’t need a time machine set to the late Cretaceous period; you simply need a ballgame ticket. (And for minor league baseball, you may need your favorite beverage.)

Tremor and Aftershock, Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (Class A Baseball)

First, we have two real dinosaurs (or Godzilla spawn): Tremor the Rallysaurus and his sidekick, Aftershock. They are mascots for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, a minor league baseball team in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.

Tremor looks a lot like a T-Rex. And he’s soft, rather than smooth-skinned. In fact, he appears to be covered with an epidermis resembling cotton pajamas. He’s not so furry as some mascots, but he’s no lizard, either.

Aftershock was added later to the staff. The team says that he is Tremor’s younger brother. Aftershock gets more points for furriness, sporting a wild tuft of hair on top of his head. The top of Tremor’s head is covered with a baseball cap most of the time, but when he does take it off, he’s bald underneath. But look at Aftershock’s shock of hair:

Why the earthquake theme? And what does it have to do with dinosaurs? Rancho Cucamonga is a suburb east of Los Angeles, nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. It sits right near the junction of two major earthquake fault lines, the San Andreas and the San Jacinto faults. When the baseball team began playing there, the name “Quakes” was chosen and its first stadium was known as the “Epicenter”.

As the team’s story goes, when the Epicenter was built, the ground split open and out came these dinosaurs.

Watch Out! That's Brian Wilson. He's kind of a scary dude!

Tremor Brian Wilson Merc.jpg
Source: Mercury News.

Tremor is Played By a High School History Teacher

As I was beginning to write this post, the Minor League Baseball site ran an article about Aaron Bishop, the man behind Tremor’s mask for the last 20 years. He teaches at a local high school. With summers off, he gets his exercise as a dinosaur. He’s one of the funniest and hardest working mascots that I have seen at any level of any sport, contributing greatly to the fun atmosphere at these games.

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Source: Minor League Baseball, milb.com.

Earlier in his career, Bishop was a major league mascot, working as an orangutan for the San Diego Padres. His boss was Theo Epstein, now famous as President of the Chicago Cubs. Before becoming the legendary executive who ended decades-long championship droughts for both the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, Epstein supervised the Padres’ mascot.

Bishop, who had a two hour commute to San Diego for the games, once asked him for a pay raise. Epstein’s response? “You’re just the mascot.” He eventually went back to the minor leagues and settled for a job close to home.

Orangutans are furry, but we already knew that. This is supposed to be a post about dinosaurs.

Another Dino Mascot: Dinger from the Colorado Rockies (Major League Baseball)

The Colorado Rockies baseball team also has a mascot, a purple triceratops dinosaur named Dinger. Dinger entertains, but has gotten some flak from fans and commentators for several reasons. First, many fans think he’s not that cute. And he’s not scary either (they say he should be cute or scary). Also, some have said that his broad figure signals a tolerance for obesity. The kinder term is "portly".

Dinger.jpe
Source: NESN.

As Denver Post columnist William Porter wrote in 2007, though Dinger is supposed to be a triceratops, “he bears about as much resemblance to the three-horned Cretaceous-era dinosaur as your Uncle Elbert. But there he is at every home game, cheering our team, dancing around in his jersey like a Rockette after a Stay Puft marshmallow binge, and dispensing T-shirts into the stands with a swag cannon.” http://www.denverpost.com/2007/10/27/what-to-make-of-dinger-our-prehistoric-purple-pal/

According to the team, Dinger was born from a dinosaur egg found during the construction of their new stadium in 1994. In fact, there were dinosaur bones, and possibly a triceratops skull, which provided the inspiration for Dinger’s character.

Criticism aside, Dinger is fuzzy. His skin strongly resembles felt or fleece. However he is not a T-Rex. So why is he even in this post? It’s solid scientific evidence that dinos were fuzzy. (And I read somewhere that they dug the Grand Canyon, too. A long time ago, maybe in 1950.)

And Then There’s The Raptor (NBA Basketball)

There must be more dinosaurs at various levels of sports and in other parts of the world, but I have space for one more: the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). If you think Canadians are creative, you might wonder why they could not come up with a better name for the Raptors’ team mascot than “The Raptor”, but that’s its name.

The Raptor is well-liked, but one of its most viral moments came while it was delivering someone a Grand Prize. In this video, you can watch as The Raptor dropped a flat-screen TV down the stairs of the arena. Crack, crack. (With due respect to the people saying this video was fake, perhaps it was, but it also was posted by the team.)

There is also an inflatable mini mascot version of the Raptor. This one is not fuzzy; it looks more like a red boxing glove. Its skin is more like a beachball than something warm and cuddly. Here is a clip of it eating a Nets fan.

And what does “no fuzz” mean, anyway?

According to former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before Congress today, “no fuzz” seems to mean that something is clear and definite. It would be nice if we knew for sure what T-Rex’s skin looked like. Until someone resurrects one from ancient DNA and opens a Jurassic Park (or a Cretaceous Park), all we have is the fossil record and fuzzy stuffed animal mascots who rock out to Jungle Boogie during breaks in the game.

T-Rex Dinoz from Suki Toys, available at Amazon.com