A team of researchers has discovered specimens of ostrich-shaped dinosaurs ( Ornithomimus edmontonicus ) in Canada that lived 75 million years ago and used their feathers for courtship, as do peacocks today.
The researchers found three skeletons, two belonging to adults and one of a juvenile. Although all of them had the body covered with short feathers that looked like "fluff", the more mature specimens showed signs of having large feathers on the extremities, forming a kind of wings . Although they were too large to take flight, everything indicates that the wings were used for courtship or to hatch eggs . And it is that, unlike current birds, which develop their plumage after hatching, these prehistoric reptiles did so only when they reached their sexual maturity.
"This finding is really encouraging because it is the first time that specimens of feathered dinosaurs have been found in the American continent, " explained Darla Zelenitsky, co-author of the study published in the latest issue of the journal Science . Until now known fossils of feathered dinosaurs came from China or Germany.
