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Thursday, April 21, 2022
A multinational team of scientists led by paleontologists from University College Cork in Ireland report that pterosaurs, dinosaur-like beings that lived over 200 million years ago, may have had colorful feathers. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The team examined a fossilized headcrest from Tupandactylus imperator that lived over 200 million years ago in what is now Brazil. They found a rim of fossilized structures of different sizes and textures that they say are feathers. They were able to examine these feathers with an electron microscope. By imaging the preserved melanin pigment in the feathers, they were able to predict color as well.
These findings place the evolution of feathers in animals about 100 million years earlier than had been estimated. The evidence that the feathers may have been brightly colored also suggests an additional reason for their development: Colors help modern animals identify each other and communicate, and ancient animals may have benefitted in the same way.
“We didn’t expect to see this at all”, said team co-leader Dr Aude Cincotta. “For decades palaeontologists have argued about whether pterosaurs had feathers. The feathers in our specimen close off that debate for good as they are very clearly branched all the way along their length, just like birds today”.
This is not the first evidence of feathers in pterosaurs overall. Scientists have observed their small size and lack of branching and concluded that they could not have been used for flight. They believe the animals may have used feathers to keep warm, as mammals do with fur. However, the feathers observed in the present study do show branching, reads the study authors, and the elongated shape of the melanosome bodies within the cells suggests color.
The fossil itself was found in Brazil’s Crato formation, which contains sediement from the Cretaceous Period. Records do not show who found it, but a private collector donated it to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. It did not return to Brazil until February, when it arrived at the Museum of Earth Sciences in Rio de Janeiro. Many fossils have been smuggled out of Brazil against the country’s laws.
Pterosaurs are not actually dinosaurs, but they remain associated with them in the popular mind. Like dinosaurs and birds, they are placed in the taxonomic group Avemetatarsalia.