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Dinosaurs with Feathers?

Two summers ago, a farmer in northeast China was digging in a dried-up lake. He dug up some strange-looking fossilized bones. He wondered: Could these be the remains of an ancient dragon?

Not quite. The bones actually belonged to an ancient meat-eating dinosaur named Sinosauropteryx prima (Sine-o-sore-opp-ter-icks pree-ma). The creature, which was close to the size of a large chicken, lived about 120 million years ago.

Size may not have been the only thing this dinosaur had in common with the chicken. This month scientists made a surprising announcement: Sinosauropteryx might have had tiny feathers!

That's not as crazy as it may sound. Most experts think today's pigeons and parrots are related to dinosaurs. Some even argue that birds are dinosaurs, the one branch of the dinosaur family tree that has survived.

Many scientists had wondered whether some dinosaurs had had feathers. But feathers are so fragile that they usually rot away without a trace. Luckily, the Sinosauropteryx fossils showed a lot of detail. "I had been skeptical of the claim that the dinosaur had feathers," says Canadian scientist Phil Currie. "Boy, was I impressed!"

Not everyone is convinced. Some bird experts suggest that the feather-like structures may be bits and pieces of scales. Whatever they are, they are not the right size and shape for flying. They may have been used to keep the dinosaur warm or help it attract a mate.

When and why feathers first appeared on the earth is just one puzzle scientists hope to solve by studying the area where the fossils were found. "These beds date to a time when modern mammals, flowering plants, and birds were invented," says Alan Brush, a bird expert at the University of Connecticut. "The discovery of this site is just as important as going to Mars."

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