Sentences with phrase «for feathered dinosaurs»

The finds may suggest new places to look for feathered dinosaurs, since these were found in stone previously thought to be too coarse for the preservation of feathers.

The largest of the Yutyrannus skeletons — found in China's Liaoning province in rocks of an era famed for its feathered dinosaurs — represents an adult that in life would have measured about 9 meters long, or slightly shorter than a school bus.

Not exact matches

One of the biggest dilemmas for those who want to believe that dinosaurs evolved into birds is that the so - called feathered dinosaurs found thus far are dated to be about 20 million years more recent than Archaeopteryx.

Ever since paleontologists dug up the first Archaeopteryx fossil in 1861, the strange, feathered dinosaur has been exhibit A in the case for evolution — and helped reveal that birds are actually dinosaurs.

THE record for the oldest feathered dinosaur, which has stood since the discovery of Archaeopteryx, has finally fallen to an even older fossil unearthed in China.

The previous record holder for heftiest feathered dinosaur — Beipiaosaurus, a creature that most probably lived alongside Y. huali — weighed only one - fortieth as much.

«For the last 20 years we have been amazed by the wondrous feathered dinosaurs of Northeastern China.

Now that he knows what to look for, Benton hopes to unveil the colors of other feathered dinosaurs, helping scientists trace their relationship to birds and even decode their social behavior.

Dr. Paul Barrett, dinosaur researcher at the Natural History Museum, London, who was not involved with the study, commented, «Daohugou is proving to be one of the key sites for understanding the evolution of feathered dinosaurs, early mammals, and flying reptiles, due largely to the fantastic levels of preservation.

As Dr. Sullivan further remarked, «The Cretaceous feathered dinosaurs of northeastern China have been astonishing palaeontologists and the public for almost two decades now, and the Daohugou Biota preserves their Jurassic counterparts in the same region.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, looks at fossilized organelles (called melanosomes) that contain melanin, a type of pigment that suggests a color scheme for the birdlike dinosaur: gray feathers on its body, a reddish mohawk down the center of its head, and white feathers with black tips that line the creature's wings and legs.

But with the discovery in recent years of many earlier feathered dinosaurs with anatomies tailored for flight, the idea is being seriously considered.

Dinosaurs everywhere have been reevaluated, even to the extreme of considering that such familiar ones as Tyrannosaurus rex were probably feathered, at least for part of their lives.

Researchers might be able to use molecular methods to work out the dinosaur family tree, and get answers to long - standing questions such as whether dinosaurs were warm - or cold - blooded and when feathers began to be used for flight.

If that's indeed what they were, it would suggest not only an earlier origin for such shafted feathers among this group of dinosaurs, but also a new interpretation of their purpose.

For a century and a half, the 150 - million - year - old feathered creature called Archaeopteryx has reigned as the earliest known bird and as a symbol of the link between ancient dinosaurs and living fowl.

That leaves open the question of what function dinosaur wings and feathers originally served if they were not used for taking to the air.

All the known fossils of primitive birds (stem avians) could easily fit on a desk and our only look at Mesozoic [250 to 65 million years ago (Ma)-RSB- feathers (except for a few isolated plumes) was Archaeopteryx, a theropod dinosaur considered by most to be the most primitive bird (see the figure).

Sinosauropteryx is famous for being one of the first dinosaurs to be found with fossilized feathers.

Although the best evidence for feathers has been found in a group of meat - eating dinosaurs dating back to about 150 million years ago, and from which birds apparently evolved at about the same time, there have been sightings of bristly, filamentous structures in very distantly related plant - eating dinosaurs as well.

But the past decade or two of research, which is marked by the discovery of thousands of specimens of early birds and flying dinosaurs, also shows that feathers were an early evolutionary innovation — even if they probably arose for reasons unrelated to powered flight, such as insulation or sexual display.

A PIECE of feathered dinosaur tail was trapped in amber and preserved for almost 100 million years.

Dinosaur feathers provided key support for Ostrom's earlier proposal that birds had evolved from small, swift predatory dinosaurs.

As Sullivan said, «The Cretaceous feathered dinosaurs of northeastern China have been astonishing paleontologists and the public for almost two decades now, and the Daohugou Biota preserves their Jurassic counterparts in the same region.

Paul Barrett, a dinosaur researcher at the Natural History Museum, London, said, «Daohugou is proving to be one of the key sites for understanding the evolution of feathered dinosaurs, early mammals and flying reptiles, due largely to the fantastic levels of preservation.

The name Aurornis xui is made up of the words Aurora (Latin for «daybreak») Ornis (Greek for «bird») and xui, in honor of Xu Xing, a well - known Chinese paleontologist who specializes in feathered dinosaurs and the non-avian dinosaur - to - bird transition.

The famous feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx lived circa 150 million years ago in present - day Bavaria and is traditionally considered crucial for understanding the ancestral fashion of bird flight.

This hypothesis has been able to gain traction thanks to recent work that can determine the color of dinosaurs based on the fossilized feather (search online for «Anchiornis huxleyi» for a treat on dinosaur feather colors).

The extinctions at the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, for example, were mostly limited to foraminfera, single - celled shelly protozoa living at the sea floor, not really a «mass extinction» like the end Cretaceous when the dinosaurs got feathered.

Also, I assume your «dinosaurs got feathered» remark was tongue in cheek (the birds got their feathers long before then), but it may be confusing for some readers.