Many feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly — at least, not like birds do today. But the reptiles’ feathers may have been more birdlike than scientists thought.
In 2019, fossil analyses found that feathers from a flightless dinosaur mostly contained a different, more flexible form of the keratin protein that makes up modern bird beaks, scales and feathers. Researchers suggested then that feathers had evolved molecularly over time to become stiffer as birds — the last living dinosaurs — took to the skies (SN: 7/31/14).
Yet fossilization can change feather proteins, making one keratin protein resemble another, researchers report in the October Nature Ecology & Evolution. The team also presented their findings on October 19 at the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology’s annual meeting in Cincinnati.
The study raises the possibility that dinosaur feathers may have mainly contained the beta-keratin proteins found in bird feathers. While such a finding would not imply all feathered dinosaurs flew, it does raise new questions about feather evolution.
The work also gives scientists valuable insight into one way the fossil record may transform over time, says Julia Clarke, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the new research. “There’s still a lot more to discover about the process of chemical alteration that all structures undergo during the process of rock formation, liquification and burial,” she says.
For the new study, paleontologist Tiffany Slater of University College Cork in Ireland and colleagues placed modern bird feathers under heat conditions that mimic what deeply buried dinosaur feathers may have endured during fossilization. Beta-keratins in the feathers unfolded and reformed in the shape of alpha-keratins, the more flexible form previously found to be dominant in dinosaur feathers, suggesting that a similar process had occurred in those feathers.
The researchers next…
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