Dinos likely didn’t really have feathers…
The theory that dinosaurs gave rise to birds has been dealt a blow by palaeontologists who have examined critical evidence from a Chinese fossil.
The discoverers of the turkey-sized dinosaur Sinosauropteryx say it would have had primitive feathers, supporting the bird-from-dinosaurs theory.
But the latest research says these ‘proto-feathers’ are really frilly structures on the creature’s back.
The meat-eating dinosaur was covered in these fibers that looked like they could have been primitive feathers. These feathers were not said to be used of flight but were there only for aesthetic purposes.
Under a high powered microscope it turns out the feathers were actually the remains of a frill of a collagen fiber that would have ran down the dinos back. THis is the same sort of fiber that is found on the back of common day reptiles.
However this small set back doesn’t discredit the amount of other discoveries that could link dinosaurs to birds. The archaeopteryx (seen in the picture at the top of this post) is known as the very first bird, and most definitely evolved from dinosaurs… it fills in a huge gap in the fossil record, but still leaves a lot of space for debate.
The theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds mostly stands on the shoulders of the idea that smaller dinosaurs gained their evolutionary advantage by growing feathers to keep warm and to fly to high levels for safety.
