We know today that even toward the end of Mesozoic, most predatory dinosaurs were feathered rather than scaled, but it was still a bit of a shock to the first of Spec's biologists to find a planet seemingly populated only with fuzzy carnivores. Deinonychosaurian draks and tyrannosauroid striders (the principal predatory guilds of Spec) are both generously plumed, and so look incongruously cuddly.