Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
Benton, M.J., Dhouailly, D., Jiang, B., McNamara, M.
2019
Unknown
Trends In Ecology & Evolution
The Early Origin of Feathers
Published
()
Optional Fields
feather birds dinosaurs pterosaurs CBPs gene regulatory network
34
856
869
Feathers have long been regarded as the innovation that drove the success of birds. However, feathers have been reported from close dinosaurian relatives of birds, and now from ornithischian dinosaurs and pterosaurs, the cousins of dinosaurs. Incomplete preservation makes these reports controversial. If true, these findings shift the origin of feathers back 80 million years before the origin of birds. Gene regulatory networks show the deep homology of scales, feathers, and hairs. Hair and feathers likely evolved in the Early Triassic ancestors of mammals and birds, at a time when synapsids and archosaurs show independent evidence of higher metabolic rates (erect gait and endothermy), as part of a major resetting of terrestrial ecosystems following the devastating end-Permian mass extinction.
0169-5347
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534719301405
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.04.018
Grant Details