For more than a century, dinosaurs were seen as reptilian animals and were often treated as little more than giant, hulking monsters, especially in fiction. Within the last few decades, researchers have re-evaluated these ideas. Newer research has revealed that dinosaurs were overall much more like birds than lizards— in fact, birds are themselves considered to be very specialized dinosaurs based on mountains of evidence available in the fossil record, with a line being drawn to distinguish "avian dinosaurs" (birds) from "non-avian dinosaurs" (classical prehistoric dinosaurs).
This, however... hasn't gone well with the mainstream media. People like their big, scary, roaring and sulking lizard creatures, even if the actual animals were anything but hulking monsters (in fact, most dinosaurs are and were small). Even many dinosaur enthusiasts (many who grew up on media such as Jurassic Park, despite the film depicting dinosaurs as warm-blooded and somewhat bird-like animals, according to then-newer theories) are averse to the idea. Dinosaurs in media still tend to be based on older reconstructions, either because the artists didn't care enough to make them accurate, because they didn't know better, or because they simply don't like the contemporary reconstructions.
Feathered dinosaurs were hit hard with this stigma.
The idea of feathered dinosaurs tends to be mocked and scoffed at in media. Contrary to common belief, not all dinosaurs are theorized to have had feathers— just many theropods (almost all of them being coelurosaurs) and a few of the smaller ornithischians.note It's also perfectly possible for dinosaurs to have had both scales and feathersnote . However, the popular view of feathered dinosaurs is a giant fluffy dinosaur with brightly coloured feathers. Tyrannosaurus rex has received most of the brunt of this issue. Due to its popularity, it's the poster-child for feathered dinosaurs, albeit highly misguidedly: paleontologists aren't quite sure whether they were fully feathered or not (or even if it had feathers), but the mainstream image is that tyrannosauruses are now "cute and cuddly". Feathered dinosaurs bring to mind fowl like chickens and ducks, rather than the equally-feathered-but-frightening modern-day raptors or extinct terror birds.note Large ratites such as ostriches, emus, and especially cassowaries, also feathered-but-frightening, tend to be ignored in the subject of feathered dinosaurs as well (and the fact that ostriches themselves are not taken so seriously in media doesn't help), despite being the closest things to living prehistoric dinosaurs, not to mention many dinosaurs resembling them such as Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus (whose name literally means "ostrich mimic"), and Gallimimus.
Adding to this is that a piece of media that does want to get the science right and isn't afraid to give its dinosaurs feathers is also likely to try to depict them as the animals they were, rather than the monsters and dragons as which they've historically been depicted. For people who preferred the "cooler" monstrous versions, the feathers became symbolic of the perceived "softening" of dinosaurs.
As a consequence of the above, feathered dinosaurs in media tend to be joke characters; they're goofy looking and often goofy acting, particularly making failed attempts at flying which frequently happens with Archaeopteryx, arguably the most famous of all feathered dinosaurs.note A major exception to this rule is the dromaeosaurs, a.k.a. raptors, which definitely had feathers due to fossil evidence (with the biggest kicker being the discovery
of a tail preserved in amber, feathers and all), and the group are closely related to birds. This may be because raptors are almost always portrayed as small, screeching Lightning Bruisers as a counteract to the "giant, roaring brutes" image— in fact, they were the very dinosaurs to break that stereotype and revive the bird-dinosaur connection theory (with the discovery of the raptor Deinonychus whose skeletal structure was nearly identical to that of Archaeopteryx). Feathered dromaeosaurs in media will usually be more exotic or bizarre-looking than goofy, but even then, they won't be taken as "seriously" as the classic scaly version.
In short, feathered dinosaurs are typically only actually unintimidating because they're deliberately made to be so by people who don't like the idea of it; a real encounter with a fully-feathered Tyrannosaurus rex would be just as terrifying as with a scaly one because it's still a gigantic apex predator. If you still need some modern day perspective to this, just watch the climax of A Bug's Life and ask yourself if those cute feathers made the baby birds any less terrifying when Hopper got fed to them.
The reluctance to feature feathered dinosaurs is sometimes attributed to budget—feathers are expected to be blown around by wind and the motion of the animal or "expand" like a bird's wing in flight, meaning that they need to in visual media as well or else invite the Uncanny Valley, whereas a scaly or otherwise hairless animal doesn't typically have this requirement. However, given CGI birds have been done many times even with a low budget, this may actually be due to ignorance or lack of experience on part of the animators. Feathers tend to lay flat against the body even in wind or motion, especially on birds of prey, thus the issue of animating feathered animals is resolved by having the feathers sculpted as part of the model and kept as textures, with only the more prominent feathers like on the wings and tail being rendered. A predatory dinosaur with a smooth or sleek-looking coat of feathers like on an eagle would not invoke the same uncanny effect as one with all of its feathers sticking out like frazzled hair, and would be fairly easy on the budget.note
In Japanese media, however, feathered dinosaurs are more common and less likely to be depicted as goofy. This may be due to Japan's emphasis on compulsory biology education for children, which results in more familiarity with modern scientific concepts, fostering a less reactionary mindset. The growth of the internet has also led to increased acceptance of the idea, to the point of complaining about the lack of feathers on certain dinosaurs, though not without a good amount of people still joking about the T. rex looking like a massive chicken (though making even the big, hulking lizard version cute and cuddly is also not unheard of). This dislike towards non-feathered depictions has also started to grow among Western dinosaur fans in recent years, and paleoartists in general. This has reached the point where many artists have depicted almost every dinosaur as having feathers, including sauropods (which most likely didn't have feathers) and ornithischians (only three specimens of which are known to have had quill-like feathers). So far, the only dinosaurs that are confirmed to have true feathers were the coelurosaurs.
It should be pointed out that the idea of feathered dinosaurs is not in fact as recent as many are led to believe. While definite evidence of feathers on dinosaur fossils (and broad acceptance of the idea in the paleontological community) is indeed relatively recent, well-supported speculation of feathers on certain dinosaurs is almost as old as the basic hypothesis of a bird-dinosaur evolutionary connection from the 1800s. Even without the smoking gun evidence found in the late 1980s, paleontologists had been almost certain some dinosaurs had feathers and rendered them with such as far back as the 1970s, while speculative fiction writers were toying with the idea as early as 1908.
As people get more used to the idea of feathered dinosaurs, however, with the influx of more accurate Dinosaur Media in The New '20s such as Prehistoric Kingdom, Prehistoric Planet, Jurassic World Dominion, and Dinosaur Sanctuary, this trope does seem to be in decline.
Naturally, a subtrope of Artistic License – Paleontology. Contrast Feathered Fiend. Compare Basilisk and Cockatrice and Feathered Dragons, which are usually not seen as goofy.note See also Creepy Hairless Animal, for when the absence of fur or feathers makes an animal scarier. See Doofy Dodo and Quacking Up for subtropes applied to avian dinosaurs.
Examples:
- In the Viz Media manga Dinosaur Hour, two Protoceratops learn about the concept of a feathered Velociraptor and try to add plumage to a drawing of a raptor in the most ridiculous way possible. As for the real feathered Velociraptor itself, it is overly fluffy and resembles a cartoonish duckling. That doesn't stop them from viciously attacking the Protoceratops.
- Dinosaur Sanctuary: Defied by undermining the scariness of featherless dinosaurs. In the first chapter, Suzume tries to comfort a schoolgirl who is scared by Yuki, Enoshima Dinoland's female Giganotosaurus (a featherless theropod), by explaining that dinosaurs are not all scary, pointing out that birds are also dinosaurs. One schoolboy then makes a dig at her statement by insisting dinosaurs are big and scary, much more so than birds, and expects Yuki to eat a whole deer carcass that's currently being fed to her. He is dismayed when the Giganotosaurus initially hesitates in eating the carcass, due to being unfamiliar with it as she's usually fed meat with the bones and hair removed, proving Suzume's point that even big dinosaurs are not always scary.
- Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: In issue #21, one of Moon Girl's taunts to her Alternate Universe counterpart Devil Girl is that Devil Dinosaur's counterpart Moon Dinosaur has more feathers than Big Bird. Moon Dinosaur himself is an aversion, however, as he is just as fierce as Devil Dinosaur.
- Pooch Café: One strip has Boomer mention to Poncho that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Poncho envisions a T. rex with ridiculously small wings defecating on a car... and crushing it. Poncho agrees that the notion is difficult to believe.
- The Good Dinosaur: The only feathered dinosaurs are the raptors going after the T. rex's herd. Although fearsome, they are depicted as goofy rednecks, with their feathered crests resembling mullets. Unlike most examples, though, it's their lack of feathers that highlights their goofiness— their bodies look plucked and scrawny, giving them a "dumb hillbilly" look.
- Ice Age:
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs had a goofy-looking Archaeopteryx which falls victim to Black Comedy. Averted by the Guanlong in the same film, who are depicted as threatening (though their feathers are really more like quills).
- Ice Age: Collision Course has a trio of feathered, flying dromaeosaurids as the main antagonists. They appear to be somewhat smarter than the scaly dinosaurs seen in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, as they talk fluent English, but they're also goofier and less monstrous.
- The Land Before Time does this with Guido the Microraptor from the 12th movie, who is a nervous and awkward Plucky Comic Relief; the goofy Yellow Bellies (Beipiaosaurus) from the 13th movie, who are scaredy cat comic relief types; and the neurotic and panicky Nothronychus Wild Arms from the 14th movie. The 14th movie, however, also averts this with the menacing Yutyrannus (granted, they're far more scantily-feathered than the real thing).
- The Hatchling plays this straight with Ralph, a baby Deinocheirus, but averts this with the adult Deinocheirus, which are shown in a regal light.
- The Jurassic Park franchise has historically had a complicated relationship with this trope.
- The male Velociraptors in Jurassic Park III, the Indominus rex in Jurassic World, and the Indoraptor in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom all have small crests of quill-like proto-feathers, but are mostly scaly, presumably to make sure they still look threatening.
- In the first film, a kid at fossil dig comments on Grant's assertion that birds are descended from dinosaurs with "That doesn't sound very scary! More like a six-foot turkey!" but Grant goes on to lay out why a real Velociraptor would be anything but a joke. This might be considered an aversion, were it not for the fact that the movie's raptors are themselves featherless. Throughout the film, Grant is also shown to be a firm believer in the then-somewhat-controversial theory that dinosaurs are the ancestors of the birds.
- The lack of feathers on the "modern" dinosaurs is ultimately justified, via retcon, as being a result of the genetic engineering that created them in the first place and they can only be made viable thanks to a "null gene;" coincidentally, this causes them to lack feathers. The real reason is because the dinosaurs didn't have feathers in the first film — long before the idea of feathered dinosaurs was widely accepted even as their relationship to birds was directly acknowledged in-universe — and so it wouldn't make sense in-universe for them to suddenly have them without explanation, especially in the case of the Tyrannosaurus that appears in Jurassic World, which is explicitly the original tyrannosaur from the first film rather than a newly-cloned specimen.
- Averted with the Pyroraptor and Therizinosaurus in Jurassic World Dominion — both are given decent feathered coats, but they are also treated as legitimate threats. Special mention goes to the Therizinosaurus, which is one of the most aggressive animals in the franchise—it delivers a One-Hit Kill to a deer in its territory just for being there, and soon after is clarified as an herbivore to anyone unfamiliar with it in the audience.
- Played With by the Moros — while it has a sparse coat of feathers and most of its scenes are goofy and lighthearted, one in the Biosyn sanctuary is shown viciously killing and eating a jerboa, making it a sort of Killer Rabbit. Of course, this was in a very small enclosure and was clearly meant to be like feeding a live mouse to a pet snake, rather than the piranha-like behavior exhibited by the Compsognathus elsewhere in the franchise.
- In Carnosaur, a major part of what makes the carnivorous dinosaurs terrifying is how bird-like they look and behave, which causes an Uncanny Valley effect in many people who expect dinosaurs as big, lizard-like creatures. Darren Penward, who resurrected the dinosaurs, is shown to be a firm believer of the then-somewhat-controversial dinosaur-bird connection theory. This would be considered an aversion, if it weren't for the fact that none of the carnivorous dinosaurs in the book possess feathers.
- Dinotopia: Averted in the fourth book, Journey to Chandara, where feathered dinosaurs appear for the first time in the series and are treated with a sense of wonder as much as the scaly dinosaurs.
- Primitive War: Averted. A majority of carnivorous dinosaurs in the books are feathered, and many of them are terrifying. The Utahraptor, Tyrannosaurus, and Yutyrannus are notable examples.
- The Monster of Partridge Creek is a Weird West short story published in 1908 in which a living Ceratosaurus is found roaming through the Yukon Territory. Presumably as an adaptation to the cold environment, the creature has developed a shaggy coat, which does not make it any less threatening. This story is the oldest known fictional portrayal of a feathered dinosaur, and possibly even the oldest portrayal of non-avian dinosaurs surviving into the present day.
- Prehistoric Planet:
- Averted with most of the feathered dinosaurs. The troodontids are shown as agile and cunning hunters using arson hunting like firehawks, the Nanuqsaurus are portrayed like Fantastic Fauna Counterparts of gray wolves hunting Pachyrhinosaurus in the snow, the Qianzhousaurus is a nimble and ferocious woodland predator, while its Corythoraptor prey are fast and wary (if strange-looking) animals, and the Velociraptors are shown as elegant and fierce predators hunting on cliffs like snow leopards.
- Played straight, however, with the Deinocheirus, portrayed as a shaggy, moose-like swamp-dweller that comically scratches its back on trees and poops onscreen as a bit of Toilet Humor, and with the fluffy baby Tyrannosaurus, who play-fight, romp around and curiously explore their environment like a bunch of theropod kittens. The adult rexes are given very sparse feathers, as well, and portrayed with all the dignity you'd expect for a full-grown T. rex. Also, the trio of fluffy Therizinosaurus chicks, whose clumsy attempts to reach a beehive to get at the honey are played for laughs... but averted with the equally-feathery adult Therizinosaurus, which is portrayed as a creature of majesty and awe.
- Downplayed with the Mononykus. Her hunt for insects is portrayed comically due to being unfamiliar with the wet season environment - David Attenborough even gives a sympathetic "Oh dear" at her antics. But the creature's appearance is more cute than goofy, being more or less a toothy mix of barn owl, roadrunner, and anteater. Her introductory scene also emphasizes her keen survival abilities, as she uses her sharp hearing to pinpoint the location of termites inside a log, and then scoops them up with her long tongue.
- Some of the series' more overtly comical moments do have dinosaurs showing the behaviour of modern-day birds, though not necessarily the physiology, from a bachelor herd of feathery Ornithomimus making nests to impress females to a scaly Carnotaurus acting like a gigantic bowerbird and keeping a well-tended glade in the woods and doing a mating dance. However, the scenes - being based on actual animal behaviour - play more as a good-hearted chuckle than outright mockery.
- Muse Magazine: A dinosaur issue featured a Kokopelli & Company comic featuring Koko showing off various feathered theropods. Among them a feathered T. rex that clucked like a chicken.
- Magic: The Gathering: Zigzagged, usually based on what year a given plane was designed.
- Averted with the dinosaurs of Dominaria. The primary setting of Magic's first decade—created in the early 1990s—the rarely-seen dinosaurs are large and saurian in the style of Jurassic Park.
- Muraganda debuted in 2007. Appearing on just four cards as of 2023, one of them depicts an enormous reptilian dinosaur, much like those found on Dominaria.
- Defied with Ixalan's dinosaurs, first shown off in 2017. The dinosaurs on this plane are depicted with feathers, but are portrayed as dangerous predators in the wild and noble mounts and symbols of the powerful Sun Empire. They are, however, mostly depicted as larger than humans by the time they reach adulthood.
- Subtly defied in Pathfinder, where a few of the dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) are given feathers, but still look like legitimately threatening and cool creatures.
- Transformers: The Raptoricons from the Fun Publications story, "Life Finds a Way", zigzag this. Three of them, Thrashclaw, Slice, and Shred, transform into feathered Dromaeaosaurs with varying degrees of scientific accuracy. Shred plays this straight, being a small and fluffy Velociraptor with a goofy and lighthearted personality akin to a typical Transformers Kid-Appeal Character. Thrashclaw and Slice, however, are large and intimidating-looking warriors, with Thrashclaw having a scale-feather combo and Slice being fully feathered.
- ARK: Survival Evolved: Averted with the feathered dinosaurs, most of which are portrayed as dangerous. Yutyrannus in particular is feared by everybody, and Deinonychus is almost purposely-built to be a boss-killer due to its attributes for attacking large prey. Played for laughs in this piece of the Yutyrannus made for April Fools' Day.
- Jurassic Park: The Game: Inverted somewhat by the Troodon. They have a partial covering of feathers, but are treated as a worse threat than even the featherless Velociraptor (which are actually terrified of the Troodon), mainly due to their deadly venom.
- Jurassic World Evolution 2 features a few feathery dinosaurs, but without any apparent mockery. There was even a Feathered Species DLC pack, in which the character of Dr. Dua obliquely references the backlash against feathered dinosaurs with she quips not to be surprised if the Yutyrannus "ruffles a few feathers."
- In Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem, Tweety and Road Runner's prehistoric counterparts, Tweetysaurus Rex and Roadius Runnerus, are both dinosaurs covered in feathers. While they are fearsome fighters, they are as goofy-looking as their modern counterparts.
- Marsupilami: Hoobadventure features feathered raptors and T. rex in the "Hidden World" DLC, though the latter is a background animal. While they are fierce, they look pretty goofy thanks to the game's cartoon art style.
- Paleo Pines: Gallimimus are appropriately feathered, and they sprint so quickly that it causes the player riding them to comically lean backwards. The Dinopedia even points out how cute they look when they run.
- Mostly averted in Pokémon, which has three feathered dinosaur-based Pokémon families: the Archen linenote , the Tyrunt line, and the -zolt line. All of them are pretty cool, both in and out of universe. It's played straighter by Arctozolt and Dracozolt, Mix-and-Match Critters that are respectively half-dromaeosaur/half-stegosaur and half-plesiosaur, and look deliberately ridiculous (it's heavily implied that they are botched reconstructions). An even bigger aversion is a few prehistoric Paradox Pokémon you can find in Pokémon Scarlet, which are dinosaurian/draconic with feathers but are vicious, as mentioned in their discomforting Pokédex entries, and will attack you on sight in the overworld.
- Implied in both Zoo Tycoon games. In the first game, the Caudipteryx is the only feathered dinosaur and the only one that doesn't require reinforced fencing for its exhibit which makes it the most harmless animal of the dinosaur expansion pack. In the second game, the Velociraptor (which played the Raptor Attack trope straight in the original) is more accurately depicted as chicken-sized and feathered making it a 1-star animal which is harmless alongside peacocks and gazelles. In contrast, larger dinosaurs which lack feathers (including the Utahraptor, aside from a mohawk crest on the males' heads) are much more prone to and capable of escaping their enclosures and wreaking havoc in the zoo.
- Dinosaurs: Terrible Lizards features a sparsely-feathered Tyrannosaurus that is an extremely inept predator. To be fair, all the dinosaurs in the series are equally goofy.
- King Rexxtopher from Mighty Magiswords is a rare case of a feathered T. rex. It fits the overall wacky tone of the show.
- Addictive Science: When Celia learns that dinosaurs are still around in the magical universe she gets hold of some velociraptor DNA, inserts it into her Transformation Ray, and uses it on herself. Only to discover, to her horror, that's she's now covered in feathers.
- Dinosaur Comics has an overlay that modified the characters to have feathers, although not in a way that’s any more scientifically accurate than the rest of the comic.
- Girl Genius: Treylawney Thorpe encounters one, courtesy of Dina. The "completely accurate dinosauria" would be more accurate on a farm than in the Jurassic.
- In Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, the trained velociraptors are chubby-cheeked, tropical-coloured, fluffy, coo like pigeons, and friendly. Justified in that it was a side effect of the genetic engineering and breeding that made them trainable, while the unmodified velociraptors had sleeker plumage and nastier tempers — the genes that made them friendly and trainable were also the ones that made them fluffy and cute.
- Pet Foolery: Recurring Velociraptor character Twig is a very heavily feathered dinosaur who is also an opportunistic loser prone to other predators taking advantage of him or putting the kibosh on his dishonest schemes. In particular, "Intimidation" calls particular attention to his plumage when he tries to scare off a hungry Carnotaurus with a feather-poofing "intimidation display" that looks anything but intimidating. We also see some lightly-feathered T. rex characters occasionally, but they're not depicted as nearly as goofy as Twig.
- Defied in one Sandra and Woo strip where Sandra expresses her frustration at Velociraptor being depicted without feathers. The feathered Velociraptor model in the comic is portrayed very realistically.
- Schlock Mercenary: Somewhat applies, in that the dinosaurs are significantly less threatening than anyone remembers now that they know they were intelligent enough to get past the Medieval age before having to be rescued from the comet by a passing precursor worldship. Even the T. rex turns out to have become a domesticated hunting animal more adorable than terrifying, although still looking magnificent.
- xkcd has many comics pushing back against the supposed goofiness of feathered dinosaurs. One suggests that anyone who finds them unthreatening has never fought an ostrich; another imagines a world where aliens are similarly disappointed to find out that humans weren't "cooler" and cling to wildly inaccurate understandings of our physiology. A third has a parent teasing their child for the modern depictions of raptors, but upon the child informing them of the gruesome modern theory of how raptors hunted ends up equally engrossed in dinosaur books.
- Defied by TREY the Explainer. He goes with whatever the scientific research suggests but he is especially fond of feathered dinosaurs. He has several videos discussing them.
- Two Best Friends Play: Discussed. Any time the topic of dinosaurs came up in their conversations, at least one of them would rant about how scaly dinosaurs are so much cooler and scarier than feathered ones — and they would also insult fans who, in the past, tried to convince them otherwise. Of the crew, Matt seemed to feel particularly strongly about the issue. And if they're playing a game with actual dinosaurs in it, expect them to say something along the lines of "Look, this game has dinosaurs the way they should be — with no feathers!" This is clarified in Episode 192 of the Super Best Friend Cast as being Kayfabe. Pat explains that they do believe the new discoveries, they just prefer the old, scaly versions in an aesthetic sense.
- YouTuber HoopsAndDinoMan made a video called "The Allure of Modern Dinosaur Artwork" deconstructing this trope, speculating on why some people had such a strong negative reaction to the idea of feathered dinosaurs, pointing out that the Jurassic Park-style dinosaurs they preferred were also considered heretical when first proposed, and defending the modern vision of dinosaurs having feathers and other soft tissue - though he admits that one day, this model too may become outdated, and that's okay.
- American Dad!: In the episode "The Wondercabinet", Steve experiences an astral projection and decides to use it to see dinosaurs. He is somewhat disappointed to see that many of them had feathers, including a feathered T. rex that roared and clucked.
- Darkwing Duck: In the episode "Jurassic Jumble", Darkwing gets hit with Dr. Fossil's Devolution Device and is transformed into a dinosaur, one that is covered in feathers. Despite being large and powerful in this new form, Darkwing still remains as comical as ever, and not only does Fossil ridicule his form upon sight, but actually came close to defeating him had Stegmutt, Gosalyn, and Honker not interfered. Interestingly, this was before feathered dinosaurs became official by science.
- Gigantosaurus has Archie the Archaeopteryx, who is the prominent feathered dinosaur in the cast. He also has an awkward personality and is always on the receiving end of slapstick humor. Season 3 introduces Missy, an eccentric Incisivosaurus. Ironically, the raptors Cror and Totor are also depicted as goofy, but they are stereotypically featherless.
- Munro Ferguson directed How Dinosaurs Learned To Fly for the National Film Board of Canada. It's a six minute cartoon about a rotund dinosaur named Dip that amuses himself by jumping off cliffs. Though the sensation while falling approximates flying, the sudden stop at the end dulls Dip's enjoyment. However, Dip developed feathers (and lost weight) until he could fly. Some of his fellow dinosaurs developed similarly, spawning the myriad variety of birds we see today.
- Phineas and Ferb: Zig-Zagged in the episode "Last Train to Bustville". Dr. Doofenshmirtz plans to revive a dodo due to thinking they are dinosaur-like creatures (because they are extinct like dinosaurs) and imagines a large feathered dinosaur rampaging across Danville. He is disappointed when he finds out dodos are flightless turkey-like birdsnote , but then he gets attacked by the dodo he resurrected.
- Primal: "Slave of the Scorpion" features a Goofy-Acting Feathered Dinosaur in the form of an Anzu that acts like a chicken, makes comical flamingo-like honking vocalizations, and is easily killed. Unlike most instances of this trope, the Anzu is amazingly anatomically-accurate with realistic feathering. However, the episode averts this with the fuzzy Kulindadromeus which, while harmless, behave realistically and come across as cute.
- Sesame Street: Played for Laughs in the Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures segment, "Invent the Wheel". Cavemen versions of Bert and Ernie and their pet sauropod get chased by a "Ticklesaurus", a theropod that has what appear to be feathers on its head and back, which befit its tickling nature. The trio treat it as a terrifying creature, only out of not wanting to be tickled.
- The Simpsons:
- "Forgive and Forget" has a new version of Truckasaurus designed with feathers "in conformance with the latest paleontological theories about dinosaurs". The crowd ends up hating it and destroying it.
Truckasaurus II: I love you, Steven Spielberg.
- Subverted in "Days of Future Future", where some (partially-)feathered raptors tear apart a live goat fed to them during a show.
- "Forgive and Forget" has a new version of Truckasaurus designed with feathers "in conformance with the latest paleontological theories about dinosaurs". The crowd ends up hating it and destroying it.
- Wander over Yonder: Downplayed with Sylvia. She's an alien resembling a feathered dinosaur, but is the tough, no-nonsense Cloudcuckoolander's Minder to her goofy partner, Wander.
