Earliest Feathers for Show, Not Flight

Jan. 12, 2009 -- The world's first feathers probably had nothing to do with flight or staying warm but were instead for showy display purposes, according to a new study that documents the most primitive known version of feathers, which were found on a Chinese dinosaur.

The dinosaur, Beipiaosaurus, sported the likely colorful feathers on its limbs, trunk, tail, head and neck, with the neck feathers resembling a lion's mane.

Paleontologists now believe feathers evolved very early in archosaurs, the group that included dinosaurs, pterosaurs and relatives of crocodiles, in addition to today's modern birds, crocodiles and alligators.

"Our analysis suggests that feathers might have a much longer history than previously thought," lead author Xing Xu told Discovery News.

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"The first feathers might have appeared in the fossil record in the Middle Triassic about 235 million years ago," said Xu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

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Xu and colleagues Xiaoting Zheng and Hailu You studied the remains of the Chinese dinosaur, which was excavated at the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Jianchang, western Liaoning. They noticed two types of feathers on the specimen: short, thread-like structures, and longer, stiff, broader ones that represent the rudimentary feathers, according to the study.

Both types are described in a paper published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.