• DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-27223-4_5
• Corpus ID: 216384668

Filamentous Integuments in Nonavialan Theropods and Their Kin: Advances and Future Perspectives for Understanding the Evolution of Feathers

@inproceedings{Xu2020FilamentousII,
  title={Filamentous Integuments in Nonavialan Theropods and Their Kin: Advances and Future Perspectives for Understanding the Evolution of Feathers},
  author={Xing Xu},
  year={2020}
}

• Xing Xu
• Published 2020
• Environmental Science

The discovery of Sinosauropteryx in 1996 marks the beginning of a new era in the research on the origin and early evolution of feathers. Subsequent discoveries of dinosaur fossils preserving feathers and feather-like integumentary appendages from both the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits of China and other countries demonstrate a longer and more complex evolutionary history of feathers before the origin of birds than was previously thought. Currently, there are still many issues that continue to be debated or remain unresolved, such as at what point in phylogeny the first feathers originated (e.g., at the base of Avemetatarsalia vs. within Theropoda), how major microstructural features of feathers (e.g., barbules) evolved, whether early feathers developed ontogenetically in the same way as modern feathers, whether major features of feathers appeared incrementally in evolution or some appeared simultaneously (e.g., whether the feather follicle is a starting point for major feather features or these features appeared gradually), and what the primary functions of various early feathers were (e.g., display vs. insulation function for simple filamentous feathers and display vs. aerodynamic function for vaned feathers), among others. While insights from other fields such as developmental biology will help to address these various controversial issues pertaining to feather evolution, and a multidisciplinary approach is necessary to tackle and provide the full story of feather evolution, fossil specimens will continue to provide key data for the reconstruction and documentation of the evolutionary history of feathers, including evolutionary experiments and forms that no longer occur in nature.