Reconstruction of the studied pterosaur, with four different feather types over its head, neck, body, and wings, and a generally ginger-brown colour.
Reconstruction by Yuan Zhang.
New research, led by the University of Bristol, suggests that feathers arose 100 million years before birds - changing how we look at dinosaurs, birds, and pterosaurs, the flying reptiles. It also changes our understanding of feathers themselves, their functions and their role in some of the largest events in evolution. The new work, published today in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution combines new information from palaeontology and molecular developmental biology. The key discovery came earlier in 2019, when feathers were reported in pterosaurs - if the pterosaurs really carried feathers, then it means these structures arose deep in the evolutionary tree, much deeper than at the point when birds originated. Lead author, Professor Mike Benton , from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences , said: "The oldest bird is still Archaeopteryx first found in the Late Jurassic of southern Germany in 1861, although some species from China are a little older. "Those fossils all show a diversity of feathers - down feathers over the body and long, vaned feathers on the wings. But, since 1994, palaeontologists have been contending with the perturbing discovery, based on hundreds of amazing specimens from China, that many dinosaurs also had feathers." Co-author, Baoyu Jiang from the University of Nanjing, added: "At first, the dinosaurs with feathers were close to the origin of birds in the evolutionary tree.
TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
And extend your reading, free of charge and with no commitment.
