Feathered dinosaur

Uncommon card · No. 152380

A feathered dinosaur is any species of dinosaur possessing feathers, including all species of birds. In recent decades, evidence has accumulated that many non-avian dinosaur species also possessed feathers or feather-like structures in some shape or form. The extent to which feathers or feather-like structures were present in dinosaurs as a whole is a subject of ongoing debate and research. It has been suggested that feathers had originally functioned as thermal insulation, as it remains their function in the down feathers of infant birds prior to their eventual modification in birds into structures that support flight. Since scientific research began on dinosaurs in the early 1800s, they were generally thought to be closely related to modern reptiles such as lizards. The word dinosaur itself, coined in 1842 by paleontologist Richard Owen, comes from the Greek for 'terrible lizard'. That view began to shift during the so-called dinosaur renaissance in scientific research in the late 1960s...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Robert Nicholls, published by Angus D. Croudace, Caizhi Shen, Junchang Lü, Stephen L. Brusatte and Jakob Vinther, CC BY 2.0