Feather-covered Dinosaur Fossils Found / Science News

Description

FEATHERED ANCESTOR

The newly discovered dinosaur Anchiornis huxleyi , shown in an artist's reconstruction, is the oldest known bird-like dinosaur.

BRISTOL, England — A newly described, profusely feathered dinosaur may give lift to scientists’ understanding of bird and flight evolution, researchers report. The lithe creature, which stood about 28 centimeters tall at the hip, is the oldest known to have sported feathers and is estimated to be between 1 million and 11 million years older than Archaeopteryx, the first known bird.

Several fossils of the creature, which has been dubbed Anchiornis huxleyi , have been unearthed in northeastern China, Xing Xu reported September 25 at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The strata that contained those feathered fossils were laid down as sediments between 151 million and 161 million years ago, he and his colleagues note online September 24 in Nature .

Two types of feather adorn the creature, said Xu, of the Institute of ...

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