Researchers discover ancient pterosaurs had feathers that were a splash of color, too. Read more about it. Dinosaurs feathers
Near the coast of present-day Brazil, marine sediment preserved a bird-like pterosaur with a 10-foot wingspan, disproportionately large head and prominent cranial crest for a hundred million years.
With this fossil, Cincotta and her team discovered that not only did pterosaurs have feathers, but their feathers displayed color patterns. Importantly, this meant that avemetatarsalians, a clade of reptiles that lived during the early Triassic Period, were the first creatures to develop colored feathers nearly 250 million years ago.Though pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to fly, their cousins, the dinosaurs, were the direct ancestors of modern-day birds.
fossil though, has ended this debate. They found immaculately preserved feathers with a simple, branched structure. Because experts have observed feathers in both pterosaurs and dinosaurs, they suggest the evolutionary origin is the ancient avemetatarsalian. “We don’t know exactly what the function was,” Cincotta says. “For some pterosaurs, or even dinosaurs, it could have been camouflage. Depending on the sex, it could have been used to attract a mate.”Now that researchers have clear evidence that pterosaurs had feathers, there are more questions to answer.
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