Dinosaur Feathers...

Over the past year or so, more and more scientists are speculating that all dinosaurs had feathers, not just the few that evolved into today's birds.  I'm old enough to have grown up with the “scientific consensus” that the cold-blooded dinosaurs had all gone extinct, with only fossils remaining.  Then came the revelations of the last ten years or so that (a) dinosaurs were actually warm-blooded, and (b) that some dinosaurs had evolved into today's birds.  That was shocking enough!  Now the new “scientific consensus” is edging toward the notion that all dinosaurs had features – a kind of fuzzy thermal coat, much like mammalian fur.  If this is correct, then really the reign of the dinosaurs isn't much different (in evolutionary historical terms) then the much later reign of large mammals (saber-tooth tigers, mammoths, giant beavers, etc.) – the ones we know as fossils were the branches of the family that didn't survive, and the ones we know as birds were the branches that did...