Dinosaurs had 'earliest feathers'
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News
Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers.
The creatures are all more than 150 million years old.
The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the "oldest bird" recognised by science.
Professor Xu Xing and colleagues tell the journal Nature that this represents the final proof that dinosaurs were ancestral to birds.
The theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs has always been troubled by the absence of feathers more ancient than those on the famous Archaeopteryx.
This has given critics room to question the idea.
But the new fossils, which come from two separate locations, are in most cases about 10 million years older than the primitive Archaeopteryx discovered in the late 19th Century.
One of the new dinosaur specimens, named Anchiornis huxleyi, is spectacular in its preservation.
It has extensive plumage covering its arms and tail, and also its feet - a "four-winged" arrangement, says Professor Xu from the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.
'Immensely exciting'
"The first specimen we discovered earlier this year was incomplete," he told BBC News.
"Based on that specimen, we named it Anchiornis; and we thought it was a close relative of birds. But then we got a second specimen, which was very complete - beautifully preserved.
"All over the skeleton, you see feathers.
"Based on this second specimen, we realised that this was a much more important species, and definitely one of the most important species for our understanding of the origin of birds and of their flight."
Professor Xu believes the four-winged shape may have been a very important stage in the evolutionary transition from dinosaurs to birds.
Details of the latest discoveries have been presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists, being held this year at the University of Bristol, UK.
The renowned Bristol palaeontologist Michael Benton said the announcement was immensely exciting.
"Drawing the tree of life, it's fairly obvious that feathers arose before Archaeopteryx appears in the fossil record," he told BBC News.
"Now these fantastic new discoveries by Professor Xu Xing prove that once and for all.
"These new discoveries are maybe 10 million years older than Archaeopteryx."
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
Given that the creature was only recently discovered, I'm betting that the artist didn't have much to go on.
I'd love to have a look at a photo of the fossil, but I can't find any pictures anywhere, just artists' representations.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
Oh, I know. I'm trusting this Professor Xu guy to know what he's talking about, though.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
Tyyr wrote:But to be a bird you need a wishbone, or the structure so that you're wings are more than just decorations.
Did pterosaurs have that structure? Additional, it's not just with bird-like variants. Many people still refer to things like plesiosaurs, icchthyosaurs, etc., as dinosaurs.
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
The average person will refer to any extinct creature from that period that isn't clearly a mammal as being a dinosaur.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
Now, what would truly determine what this creature is would be the heart. If 3 chambered, its a dinosaur (or some similar animal). If 4 chambered, then a bird.
THis is of course a gross simplification, but for the average Joe, it works fine. Doesn't help that we don't have a heart to annalyze (yet).
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stitch626 wrote:Now, what would truly determine what this creature is would be the heart. If 3 chambered, its a dinosaur (or some similar animal). If 4 chambered, then a bird.
THis is of course a gross simplification, but for the average Joe, it works fine. Doesn't help that we don't have a heart to annalyze (yet).
Actually you're completely wrong. The classification of a dinosaur has absolutely zero to do with heart structure. Therefore you can't differentiate between birds and dinosaurs based off their heart structure. Hell, we don't know for certain anything about dinosaur hearts anyways so we don't know if they were three chambered or not.
There is only one way of avoiding the war – that is the overthrow of this society. However, as we are too weak for this task, the war is inevitable. -L. Trotsky, 1939
