Feathered Gorgosaurus pair

Earlier this year I commissioned Sean Cooper to sculpt a pair if animals I´ve had on my mind for a few years.

A pair of sub-adult Gorgosaurus libratus based on TMP 91.36.500.

I wanted them resting, reclinining in different poses, to show that theropods didn´t rush around with their gapes open all the time.

The extent of their filamentous feathery integument is contentious. Very large adults weighing perhaps 2 tonnes may have had difficulties dumping heat due to surface area/mass ratios. Very small hatchlings and juveniles may have had some kind of insulation for the opposite reason - to conserve body heat. It all depends upon their metabolism -which is still in dispute.

It seems certain that theropods did not have a "cold-blooded", ectothermic metabolism like that of many living reptiles, but neither were they "warm-blooded", endotherms in a mammalian manner. If their metabolism was not fully avian, but approaching it, perhaps large feathered animals would not have had problems with over-heating. We know that the large Moas and Elephant birds were fully feathered and weighed up to at least 1/2 a tonne. So maybe this interpretation isn´t so very far from credible...