A subject with so much detail and history that multiple books could be written without covering all that needs to be said--but hopefully I can at least give a basic run through of one of most fascinating discoveries in paleontology of the last century.
The history of feathers in dinosaurs is an absolutely fascinating one, but something in which much of our knowledge has arisen within the last decade and a half.
However, to fully understand and appreciate where we are now, we need to start in (roughly) the beginning.
The first feathered dinosaur, a bird called Archaeopteryx was found in the mid-1800s by a German quarry worker--which was sold to a local doctor who in turn sold it to the Museum of Natural History in London, where the famous Richard Owen (the British scientist who coined the term 'Dinosauria') scientifically described it (the original find was missing the head and neck--the more iconic and complete version we know of today was found in the 1880s).
It was a fascinating discovery, and one that could not have been made at more perfect of a time--the world was going to be thrown into turmoil with Darwin's The Origin of the Species. Darwin used this as an example of how truly little of the history of life they knew in the era--a bird that held both lizard-like and bird-like features. This lead early biologist Thomas Huxley to first hypothesize the dinosaurian origins of birds--however, his theory steadily fell into the wayside as the public's perception of dinosaurs as slow, lizard-like, cold-blooded animals grew into being.
This stigma about dinosaurs would hold and remain relatively unquestioned for nearly a century, until scientist John Ostrom (of Yale University) discovered Deinonychus in a quarry roughly 150 miles away from where I'm writing this!
Here was a dinosaur that held multitudes of features shared by modern day birds--fused clavicles to create a furcula or 'wishbone', a semi-lunate carpal (half moon-shaped wrist), a foot with three functional toes with a fourth atrophied--similarities in the hands, and many more.
In fact, utilizing what's called cladistic analysis (the tool that we paleontologists use to determine evolutionary relationships of long gone (and modern day) animals, we've been able to match over a hundred 'characters' (traits of body design) to those of birds. Deinonychus, true birds, Velociraptor and the like are all part of a single clade (biological group) called Maniraptora.
It was this find that lead to the 'Dinosaur Revolution' in which our modern understanding of dinosaurs as active, highly likely endothermic animals arose.
However, it was only theorized that animals like Deinonychus and the like had feathers--until in 1996 a discovery was made halfway across the world that ushered in a scientific goldmine of information, in a place called Liaoning China.
Though the fantastic preservation of specimens from the Liaoning beds was fairly well known beforehand (some fossil insect impressions were so well preserved that the coloration of its wings was shown through dark and light bands), nothing prepared paleontologists for just how incredible the discoveries at this quarry would be--most of which are brought to the museum in China through the help of local farmers.
The first of these fluffy dinosaur discoveries was a Dromaeosaur (the group which contains Velociraptor) scientifically named Sinosauropteryx.
The preservation level of these beds was so fantastic that it preserved much of the feathery covering that coated this animal in life--and after intensive microscopic analysis, they announced their discovery to the world.
Over the next 13 years, over twelve new species of feathered dinosaur--both Avian and non-Avian have been pulled from the quarries, some containing true modern feathers, one of which (Microraptor) contains wings on four limbs!
However, not all discoveries involving feathered dinosaurs are strictly made through impressions on fine sediments--paleontologist Mark Norell (the guy who collaborated with the Chinese on many Liaoning specimens) and crew found an armbone of Velociraptor that contained quill knobs--the anchor points for modern day wing feathers.
Though its body was not designed to allow it to fly, these feathers would have had several other uses--display, insulation, speed assistance, and the like.
Stay tune Wednesday for the regular series!
Enjoy, and feel free to rec away.