A Dinosaur with Feathers and Wings

Most of the TV and movie directors love to show Ornithomimus dinosaur stampeding in herds across vast plains. New research reveals this ostrich-like dinosaur's depiction is not entirely accurate -- the ornithomimids should have had feathers and wings.

This study that was led by paleontologists Darla Zelenitsky from the University of Calgary and Francois Therrien from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology found evidence of feathers preserved with a juvenile and two adults' skeletons of Ornithomimus suggesting all ornithomimid dinosaurs would have had feathers. This was recovered from 75 million year old rocks in the badlands of Alberta, Canada.

"This is a really exciting discovery as it represents the first feathered dinosaur specimens found in the Western Hemisphere," says Zelenitsky, assistant professor at the University of Calgary and lead author of the study. "Furthermore, despite the many ornithomimid skeletons known, these specimens are also the first to reveal that ornithomimids were covered in feathers, like several other groups of theropod dinosaurs."

"This dinosaur was covered in down-like feathers throughout life, but only older individuals developed larger feathers on the arms, forming wing-like structures," says Zelenitsky. "This pattern differs from that seen in birds, where the wings generally develop very young, soon after hatching."

This new finding of the earl wings indicates the initial use of these structures was not for flight.

"The fact that wing-like forelimbs developed in more mature individuals suggests they were used only later in life, perhaps associated with reproductive behaviors like display or egg brooding," says Therrien, curator at the Royal Tyrrell Museum and co-author of the study.

Till date the feathered dinosaur skeleton was recovered from almost exclusively from fine-grained rocks in China and Germany.

"It was previously thought that feathered dinosaurs could only fossilize in muddy sediment deposited in quiet waters, such as the bottom of lakes and lagoons," says Therrien. "But the discovery of these ornithomimids in sandstone shows that feathered dinosaurs can also be preserved in rocks deposited by ancient flowing rivers."

The fossils will be on display this fall at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta.

This research was published in the journal Science.