Access

News and Views

Nature 440, 287-288 (16 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/440287a; Published online 15 March 2006

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

Palaeontology: Scales, feathers and dinosaurs

Xing Xu1

Top

A fossil dinosaur that 'nests' with feathered relations in the dinosaur phylogenetic tree did not, it seems, have feathers. The discovery will encourage a re-evaluation of feather evolution.

Only birds have feathers — or so we thought until the discovery of fossils of feathered dinosaurs in China and elsewhere1. Since then, palaeontologists and biologists have together been painting a simple picture of feather evolution based on evidence from fossils and from developmental biology.

  1. Xing Xu is at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 142 Xiwai Street, Beijing 100044, China.
    Email: xu.xing@ivpp.ac.cn

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

NEWS AND VIEWS

When is a bird not a bird?

Nature News and Views (25 Jun 1998)

Palaeontology A Jurassic tyrant is crowned

Nature News and Views (09 Feb 2006)

See all 16 matches for News And Views