Groundbreaking Study Confirms Pterosaurs Really Did Have Feathers – And That's Not All

Scientists thought that all dinosaurs were covered in scales, like lizards.

Many of the marvelous extinct animals have feathers just like their later descendants, birds.

The issue of pterosaurs has never been resolved. Were they bald? Did they have feathers? Scientists say that Scant evidence in the fossil record has never been definitive.

The fossils of Tupandactylus imperator were found on slabs of ancient limestone in north-eastern Brazil.

An artist reconstruction of an imperator. All rights go to Bob Nicholls.

"We didn't expect to see this at all," says Aude Cincotta, a paleontologist from University College Cork in Ireland.

For decades, paleontologists have argued about whether pterosaurs had feathers. The feathers in our specimen are very clearly branched all the way along their length, just like birds today.

The pycnofibers covered pterosaurs may have looked like feathery fuzz, but it was not known if they were the same thing as feathers.

The new Brazilian specimen shows whisker-like single-stranded filaments from the creature's cranial crest, as well as branched, distinctly feather-like structures that have not previously been reported in pterosaurs.

The researchers write in a new paper that the mode of branching is similar to stage IIIA feathers of birds.

This is strong evidence that the structures are made of feathers.

Artist reconstruction of T. imperator. All rights go to Bob Nicholls.

It is most likely that feathers were the result of an avemetatarsalian ancestor common to both dinosaurs and pterosaurs, although it is also possible that these features evolved independently in different groups or species of animals.

The ancient plumage of the imperator appears to have preserved a colorful secret for millions of years.

The researchers found abundant micro-bodies in the animal's soft tissue and interpreted them to be melanosomes.

The melanosomes had different shapes between the branched feathers and the cranial tissue, suggesting the pterosaur might have had a range of colors.

The author of an editorial commentary on the new findings is a paleontologist from the University of Bristol in the UK.

There are electron micrograph images of Pterosaur melanosomes. The Nature, 2022, was written by Cincotta et al.

It is not certain how T. imperator benefited from different colored feathers over 100 million years ago.

He writes that they may have been used in pre-mating rituals, just as certain birds use colorful tail fans, wings, and head crests to attract mates.

Modern birds are renowned for the diversity and complexity of their colorful displays, and for the role of these aspects of sexual selection in bird evolution, and the same might be true for dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

Nature reported the findings.