Dinosaurs have feathers
Feathers evolve long before flight, on animals with no prospect of leaving the ground.
- When
- Known to
- ± 5 million years
- Era
- Jurassic, Mesozoic
Yanliao fossils preserve filamentous and vaned feathers on small theropods that plainly could not fly. Feathers therefore originated for insulation, display or brooding, and were only later co-opted for flight — the same pattern seen with limbs evolving in water. Feathers may be ancestral to a much wider group of dinosaurs than just the bird line.