The discovery of a young specimen of Sciurumimusis made it possible to discover that even in prehistoric times the animals were endowed with filiform feathers similar to hair
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Also Dinosaurs they had the hair. A team of German paleontologists has found the remains of a puppy of Sciurumimus, equipped with long threadlike feathers very similar to hair, and of a tail associated with that of the squirrel.
The fossil remains of the prehistoric animal, which lived in the late Jurassic, were found in southern Germany, in a limestone quarry in Bavaria but belongs to a different group than the one to which the feathered dinosaurs so far studied, considered the ancestors of birds.
I Theropodi, i Dinosaurs bipeds were mostly carnivores. In recent years, scientists have discovered that many of them had feathers. But this feature was found only in the particular theropod species, classified as coelurosaurs.
Sciurumimus - identified as megalosaurus, - is the first exception to this rule. The new species is also found at the base of the theropod evolutionary tree, much more so than the coelurosaur, which means that species that derive from Sciurumimus may have similar characteristics. Even the hair.
Adult Megalosaurs reached around 20 feet in length and often weighed over a ton. They were active predators, and likely hunted the other large dinosaurs as well. The one found in Germany was only 28 cm long, and probably given its young age it only hunted insects and other small prey, as evidenced by the thin sharp teeth of the jaws.
“All the feathered dinosaurs known so far were close relatives of birds"He said Oliver Rauhut, paleontologo dello state collection Bavarian paleontology and for geology, la Collezione statale di Paleontologia e Geologia bavarese.
The fossil of the baby Sciurumimus pup still retains the remains of a filamentous plumage, which indicates without a shadow of a doubt that the body in the past was covered with feathers. "This is a surprising discovery about the feathered dinosaur, found within the same area where the first feathered dinosaur, Archeopteryx, was collected over 150 years ago," he said. Mark Norell, president of the Division of Paleontology of the American Museum of Natural History.
The careful examinations carried out by the experts thanks to ultraviolet light, have also allowed us to observe the remnants of skin and feathers, which appear as bright spots around the skeleton.
Ma Sciurumimusis it is special for another reason as well. His skeleton in fact it is il more complete never found in Europe belonging to a predatory dinosaur, and is also one of the youngest dinosaurs ever discovered, characterized by large eyes.
And in common with man, in addition to the "hair", this species also had another aspect, the vary in age according to age. The discovery made it possible to establish that the dinosaurs' diet changed according to the period of their life: "Sciurumimus shows a notable difference from adult megalosaurs in their teething, and this clearly indicates that they had a different diet" explain the experts.
The discovery was published on Pnas.
Francesca Mancuso
