150 million years ago, in the Upper Jurassic, Germany lived amegalosaur covered in filamentous feathers, similar to fine hair. The paleontologists who have discovered its fossil remains have baptized it asSciurumimusfor its bushy tail, in honor of the squirrels of the genus Sciurus. It is the first case of feathered megalosaurus that has been described, according to the magazine published todayProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The fossil remains of the feather in this animal contribute to? Filling a gap in the knowledge of the early evolution of one of the most important groups of predatory dinosaurs ?, Oliver Rauhut, paleontologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, explained to the SINC agency. and co-author of the finding.
According to Rauhut, the good state of conservation of the fossil indicates thathad a large skull and short hind legs. The finest feathers would be distributed below the belly and over the dorsal vertebrae, and it would have feathers all over the body. Their filamented feathers take away the exclusiveness of their cousins, the coelurosaurs, which until now was the only known group of feathered theropods. Theropods are a suborder of thesaurischian dinosaurs, ancestors of today’s birds, they walked on two legs and were carnivores.
“Our finding is relevant in the family tree of predatory dinosaurs, but also in their common origin with the rest,” says Rauhut. “Now we have evidence thatnon-coelurosaurus dinosaurs also had proto-feathers; maybe all dinosaurs had them“.
The feathers of this predator did not allow it to fly, according to the researchers, and its main function was thermal insulation. The coat only makes sense if these animals were endothermic, one more indication that these animals were warm-blooded.
