Technological progress gave us many things. For peliytologists, it has introduced the ability to check soft materials -shins, feathers, scales and hair on fossil organisms. And as a result there are some strange new conclusions about long extinct animals, showing us that they are even strange than even we imagine.
A paper published today Nature Provides re -analysis of a fossil Mirasaura gruvogeliA 247 million-year-old reptiles, whose defined characteristic is a feather-like structure that exits its back. The popular concept of these characteristics is that appendages were feathers, but new studies argue that this is not the case. Rather, it is an unusual type of skin that extends like a fan from the back of reptile, arguing the researchers. Further research is required, but the study authors believe that the possibility of this fan acts as a communication tool among beings.
These structures preserved pigments-carry particles, which are called melanosomes that are more birds than reptile. But the curious thing about these appendages is that they were neither wings nor scales. They are “specificly corrugated” – like cardboard – and somewhat probably condemnable, researchers reported in the study.
“This evidence suggests that vertebral skin has evolutionary possibilities that can easily be imagined,” a comment for Richard Pum, a evolutionary biologist of the University of Yale, who was not involved in the new work, is written in a comment Nature,Mirasaura Teaches us that a feather is only one of the several miraculous things that have developed to get out of their skin. ,
For analysis, a team of Peliantologists in Stuttgerts State Museum of Natural History, Germany saw an old fossil again Mirasaura Search was discovered in 1939 and acquired by the museum in 2019. Researchers were in darkness about what the fossil was also – in fact, the team behind the new study was the one who first identified the creature.
Similarly, the pelionantologists were not fully able to understand MirasauraClose relatives, Longisquama insignisIn which there were long, wings -like structures on its back. At that time, scientists were not sure what to make it, partly because Longisquama The fossil was not well preserved. For the new work, however, the team re -organized skeletal anatomy of two beings, it is highly likely that it is very likely Mirasaura And Longisquama Both were part of the Drapanosor family, a strange group of reptiles from the Trichic era (201 million and 252 million years ago), sometimes referred to as a “monkey lizard”.
And these dreophaosaurus are as strange as they come: long, bird -like skull, chameleon -like body, and a physiology that suggests that they lived in trees. Should the new work be verified, which means that drapanosaurus may have sported detailed, packed structures that come out of their back, such as Mirasaura And Longisquama,
When studying the past, pelionantologists use their best decision to estimate physical characteristics based on empirical evidence. So it is also the forest that, using such careful and sophisticated methods, scientists essentially found a reptile version of the transformer. At the same time, such “radiscovers” of old fossils highlight the amazing insight from the past – that is why we are ready for them every time.
