22 November 2016
Cosmos
Curated content from the editorial staff at Cosmos Magazine.
A team of international scientists led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the oldest fossil evidence of beta-keratin from feathers of a 130-million-year-old basal bird.
Feathers and feather-like epidermal structures are well documented in several groups of non-avian dinosaurs and basal birds. Round microbodies associated with these feathers and feather-like structures were first interpreted as microbes.
But more recently, these bodies were reinterpreted as remnant melanosomes – structures that produce pigment.
Find out more in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.