A 130-million-year-old fossil dinosaur covered with feathers is on display 25 April 2001, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Birds are inextricably linked to feathers, which allow them to fly, keep warm and put on dramatic displays. Feathers, however, predate birds—having first belonged to extinct dinosaurs. Finding ...

Discovered in the 19th century, scientists once believed that the first-ever dinosaur feather used to belong to the Archaeopteryx, a transitional dinosaur that lived 125 million years ago and ...

The origin of feathers remains a mystery. By James Ashworth. First published . 19 February 2025. Birds are inextricably linked to feathers, which allow them to fly, ... As well as hunting for more ...

Feathers, essential for thermoregulation, flight, and communication in birds, originate from simple appendages known as proto-feathers, which were present in certain dinosaurs.By studying ...

The flying cousins of dinosaurs were able to change the colours of their feathers, researchers have found. An international group of palaeontologists have discovered that pterosaurs, the first ...

Electron microscopy image of the fossil skin, showing mineralized cell layers. Zixiao Yang. This implies that dinosaurs may have retained their scaly reptile skin during the early days of feather ...

Previous studies suggest that dinosaur feathers contained proteins that made them less stiff than modern bird feathers. Now, researchers have discovered that dinosaur feathers originally had a very ...