Bright feathers for flying reptiles

Anew study has revealed that pterosaurs may have had brightly coloured feathers. Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that lived during the age of the dinosaurs. They were the world’s first flying vertebrates (animals with a backbone). Scientists have long debated whether they had feathers, but now there might finally be proof.

The discovery was made by an international team of scientists looking at a pterosaur fossil from Brazil, which lived 115 million years ago, called Tupandactylus imperator. The team stumbled across the feathers accidentally. “We didn’t expect to see this at all,” said Aude Cincotta, lead author of the study from University College Cork in Ireland. These feathers were spotted on the specimen’s head. There were two different types – some were shorter, similar to hair, while others were branched like a bird’s.

Looking at these underneath a powerful microscope, Cincotta and her team found preserved microscopic structures, called melanosomes. These hold a pigment called melanin. A pigment is a chemical that gives something its colour. “In birds today, feather colour is strongly linked to melanosome shape,” explains Maria Mcnamara, co-author of the study.

Cincotta and Mcnamara found several melanosome shapes inside each of the feathers. This means that they weren’t all the same colour. “Since the pterosaur feather types had different melanosome shapes, these animals must have had the genetic machinery [internal biology] to control the colours of their feathers,” says Mcnamara. It is thought that pterosaurs may have used their multicoloured feathers to communicate with other members of their own species.

A pterosaur shows off its colourful crest and feathers.

Fossils of ancient feathers.