A microscopic examination of fossils from China has revealed that the fur-like body covering of pterosaurs was actually made up of rudimentary feathers.
Pterosaurs:
Pterosaurs were the flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs. However, Pterosaurs were only distantly related to dinosaurs and birds.
They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 to 66 million years ago).
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to master flight, followed much later by birds and bats. Scientists have long known that pterosaurs had a fur-like body covering and there has been a long-running scientific debate about how to classify it.
Recent Discovery:
to a research published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, Short, hair-like feathers covered the bodies and wings of Pterosaurs but lacked the strong central shaft of avian flight feathers. They may have provided insulation and other benefits, as hair does for mammals.
This discovery means that dinosaurs and their bird descendants were not the only creatures to boast feathers and that feathers likely appeared much longer ago than previously known. Thus, the new discovery pushes back origin of feathers.
The researchers examined Jurassic Period fossils roughly 160 to 165 million years old of two small pterosaurs called anurognathids from China.
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