HENRY

It’s commonly accepted that feathers evolved as structures to keep dinosaurs warm, before becoming exapted for flight. However, a new specimen of Sinosauropteryx suggests that these proto-feathers are actually degraded collagen, and were probably the result of decomposed soft tissue surrounding them.

The paper is available here:  A new Chinese specimen indicates that ‘protofeathers’ in the Early Cretaceous theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx are degraded collagen fibres (DOI - may not be active yet)

Nature News has more information:

But the discovery does not mean that Sinosauropteryx and its kin were not the forefathers of birds. “There’s no need to panic,” says David Unwin, a dinosaur expert at the University of Leicester, UK. “This doesn’t in any way challenge the idea that dinosaurs had feathers and that dinosaurs gave rise to birds.” The real argument now is when in evolutionary history feathers started to emerge. “Things may be more complex than we thought,” he says.

Posted on May 26th, 2007 by Simon Greenhill