Complex cutaneous protuberances have been observed in mammals, in the form of hair, and in birds and their closest fossil relatives, dinosaurs and pterosaurs, in the form of feathers. Now, a scientific team describes a new Triassic reptile with an appendices crest on the back.
The small arborium animal of 247 million years old has the name of MiraSaura Grauvogeliwhich means “Gravogel’s wonderful reptile” -his discoverer was the collector Louis Grauvogel. It had a dorsal crest with structurally complex appendices and until now unknown that grew from their skin.
These constituted an alternative to the feathers, with which they nevertheless presented some similarities.
Probably, he used the crest to be exhibited before other members of the same species, the researchers point out, for whom the finding demonstrates that complex skin structures are not only found in birds and their closest relatives.
The team also believes that this structure evolved quite independent of birds.
“This important discovery forces us to reconsider our understanding of the evolution of reptiles,” says scientists, who publish the details of this middle Triassic animal in a “revolutionary” study in the magazine Nature.
Behind there is an international team led by paleontologists Stephan Spiekman and Rainer Schoch, of the State Museum of Natural History of Stuttgart (Germany).
“Mirasaura provides the first direct proof that such structures were really formed in the early stages of the evolution of reptiles, in groups not closely related to birds and extinct dinosaurs,” Spiekman says.
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Turning point
The study marks a turning point in a trend of almost 30 years in paleontological research that began with the discovery of feathered dinosaurs in China in the late 90s.
Before that date, it was thought that reptiles, including dinosaurs that gave rise to birds, were covered with scales and that only true birds had feathers. As a result, dinosaurs used to be represented as slow and sliced animals.
This image changed when the investigations began to demonstrate that many dinosaurs looked much more like birds than was thought.
The discovery of feathered non -avian dinosaurs in China caused a wave of new studies that began to blur the lines between squamous and cold blood reptiles, on the one hand, and feathered and hot blood birds, on the other.
“It is now clear that the story is even more complex,” says the museum statement.
“He MiraSaura Grauvogeli It shows us how surprising the evolution and the potential it can be. It repeatedly produces similar structures that are completely independent of each other, but also structures so different that they can be distinguished, ”emphasizes Schoch.
For this work the latest technologies were used, including images of the ESRF European syncotron to rebuild the skull.
The drepanosauromorphs, clado to which mirasaura belongs, are known by paleontologists as extremely strange creatures of the Triassic period. They had prehensile front limbs, sometimes with a huge claw similar to that of the velociraptor.
The team also found that the tissues preserved inside the appendices contain melanosomes (pigment producing cells found in the skin, hair and feathers) that are more similar to those observed in feathers than in the skin of reptiles or mammalian hair, although they lack the branched patterns typical of the former.
All fossils studied date from about 247 million years ago and the former were found in the northeast of France in the 30s, but remained unidentified until a more exhaustive preparation was carried out in recent years.
With EFE information
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