• New pterosaur fossils suggest feathers may predate dinosaurs as a whole.
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2188405-stunning-fossils-show-pterosaurs-had-primitive-feathers-like-dinosaurs/ Pterosaurs have been known to be covered in a form of filamentous integument for some time, called "pycnofibers". For the longest, these were assumed to be simple, hair-like strands growing out of feather-like quills of the skin. However, new fossils show that not only did these feature the branching characteristic of theropod feathers, but that pterosaurs had multiple types of feather on a single specimen, including downy types for insulation. This is particularly major because at least 3 different, unrelated lineages of dinosaur are also known to have feathers. While theropod feathers are the most well-known, encompassing the vast majority of lineages of the Coelurosaurs (such as Tyrannosaurus) over the last 165 million years, at least one lineage of Ceratopsian (Psittacosaurus, 126mya) and one lineage of Heterondotosaur (Tianyulong, 185mya) also had feathers, despite being Ornithiscians instead of Saurischians like birds. If true, it would theoretically push the evolution of feathers back over 70 million years, as pterosaurs and dinosaurs last shared a common ancestor 245 million years ago, just after the Permian-Triassic extinction event depleted the dominance of the synapsids (of which mammals are ones), as it is far more likely for sauropods and other large dinosaurs to have lost an ancestral feather as they grew larger than it is for feathers to have evolved 4 times among only loosely-related animal lineages. This would also be within 5 million years of the common ancestor of dinosaurs and crocodilians, which could potentially mean that we might find croc-line archosaurs in the future that also have early feathers, as it is known that all modern crocodilians are derived from a warm-blooded ancestor whose descendants survived the K-Pg extinction because their metabolisms reverted back to ectothermy like those of most other living reptiles, allowing them to survive the starvation period that lasted for months on Earth during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event when mammal-like crocodyliforms, such as Pakasuchus, died (the armor plates on crocodilians, osteoderms, evolved from the same surface cell types as feathers on birds do, but are utilized for armor and heat regulation instead of insolation and flight). Unrelated to the pterosaur article, but if you want to find out more about those crocodyliforms, here's an article on how Pakasuchus had separately evolved a gracile body, canines and molars from mammals while also being endothermic in a bizarre case of convergent evolution: Pakasuchus – the crocodile that’s trying to be a mammal
Don't listen to this nonsense, lest you be swayed from HIS word!! The proof is in the bananas people! Look it up!
Aww, lil' guy looks so hype to realize he has feathers!
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