Feather-covered dinosaur fossils found
Peacock-sized creature predates the oldest known bird
By Sid Perkins
BRISTOL, England — A newly described, profusely feathered dinosaur may give lift to scientists’ understanding of bird and flight evolution, researchers report. The lithe creature, which stood about 28 centimeters tall at the hip, is the oldest known to have sported feathers and is estimated to be between 1 million and 11 million years older than Archaeopteryx, the first known bird.
Several fossils of the creature, which has been dubbed Anchiornis huxleyi, have been unearthed in northeastern China, Xing Xu reported September 25 at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The strata that contained those feathered fossils were laid down as sediments between 151 million and 161 million years ago, he and his colleagues note online September 24 in Nature.
Two types of feather adorn the creature, said Xu, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. One kind, commonly referred to as “dino-fuzz,” resembles a frayed bundle of filaments. The other type, similar in overall structure to the feathers of modern-day birds, consists of small filaments that branch from a larger shaftlike filament.