aesthetic representations of pterosaurs , who dominated the sky while dinosaurs ruled the Earth , tend to present them as scaly creature . These were reptiles after all . However , one household has now been shown to have had both fur and feather - similar structures on different body parts . Moreover , the feather had disagree anatomical structure depending on where they grew . The discovery was made from two superbly keep specimens , so we do n’t yet know how representative they are of the pterosaur order as a whole .
Advances in technique for imagination fossils have revealed that many extinct dinosaurs not too distantly related to to forward-looking birds were also feathered , result todebateabout whether evenT - Rexeswere part of the feather club . Pterosaurs , including the notable pterodactyl , are sometimes look up to as “ flight dinosaur ” , but in fact diverged from dinosaur ( birds let in ) long beforehand .
therefore , the discovery of three unlike sort of branched plume - like structures on the head and wing of two anurognathids was quite unexpected . The same soul had a fur - like cop on the body , tails , and branch , extended onto featherless piece of the head .
ok hair’s-breadth are of course not unique to mammalian , having evolve in nightmare form on many spiders , for example , so their show on an out reptile is n’t a complete shock . The plume , however , are far more unexpected . They raise the question of whether the first vertebrates to achieve lawful escape evolved this trait independently , or if feathers date back to a mutual ascendant of pterosaurs and shuttle some 250 million geezerhood ago . In the latter subject , the first dinosaur likely had plume , propose they may have been far more widespread than we antecedently realized .
The two square specimen appointment to the Mid or tardy Jurassic 160 - 165 million years ago and were found in Yanliao , northern China . The find is reported inNature Ecology and Evolution .
Some of the proto - plume type look more like alga than what one might find on a razz , but others have a clear-cut stem with thin branching fibers .
Anurognathidswere small pterosaurs with light nates thought to have fill a corner like to that of worm - eating bat .
advanced birds put feathers to diverse uses , which , the paper note , “ admit insulant , tactile perception , streamlining and coloration ( in the first place for disguise and sign ) . ” Pterosaurs could have used their versions for any or all of these . The authors , led by Nanjing University PhD studentZixiao Yang , argue that for one of the feather types ; “ The sound structure of the anatomical structure is consistent with a thermoregulatory function : down feathers can achieve similar insulation to mammalian hair with only about half the spate . ” The purposes of some of the other sorts of plume are punishing to determine , peculiarly the challenging interrogative of what role they played in flying .
