Mystery of flying dinosaur cousins’ huge headcrest solved by scientists

The flying cousins of dinosaurs were able to change the colours of their feathers, researchers have found.

An international group of palaeontologists have discovered that pterosaurs, the first animals after insects to evolve powered flight, were able to control the colours using melanin pigments.

Pterosaurs lived side-by-side with dinosaurs, 230 million to 66 million years ago.

This study, published in Nature, was based on analyses of a new 115million-year-old fossilised headcrest of a pterosaur called Tupandactylus imperator from northeastern Brazil, which had a huge, bizarre headcrest.

The team discovered that the bottom of the crest had a fuzzy rim of feathers, with short, wiry hair-like feathers and fluffy branched feathers.

“We didn’t expect to see this at all,” said Aude Cincotta, of University College Cork (UCC), one of the team leaders.

“For decades, palaeontologists have argued about whether pterosaurs had feathers. The feathers in our specimen close off that debate for good as they are very clearly branched all the way along their length, just like birds today.”

When the team studied the feathers with high-powered electron microscopes they found preserved melanosomes – granules of the pigment melanin. They found the melanosomes in different feather types had different shapes.

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“In birds today, feather colour is strongly linked to melanosome shape.” said Maria McNamara, also of UCC.

“Since the pterosaur feather types had different melanosome shapes, these animals must have had the genetic machinery to control the colours of their feathers.

“This feature is essential for colour patterning and shows that colouration was a critical feature of even the very earliest feathers.”

It was only in 2018 that scientists were able to prove that pterosaurs had primitive feathers to help keep them warm, just like many dinosaurs. The finding suggested that feathers evolved far earlier than previously thought.