Science today has enough evidence that dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds. It was with these ancient reptiles that the feathers appeared for the first time. In a beautiful TED Ed animation illustrated by Armela Lung, Karl Zimmer tells how this happened.
In the last decades, dozens of fossils of dinosaurs have been found with preserved feathers. Some of these dinosaurs were the size of a dove, other than a bus. The first feathers were a single thin thread. Subsequently, it became more and more complex branches. The feathers gradually spread throughout the body of the ancient ancestors of the birds, turning into a dense feather.
There are even molecules that show the variety of colors - from raven black, through alternating black and white strips to bright red spots. At first, none of these dinosaurs used the feathers for flying. Like many birds today, they do not use them for that purpose. The peacock feathers, for example, help him attract potential partners.
How are the feathered dinosaurs flying, is still somewhat mysterious. But if a small feathered lizard waved his hands as he climbed up the slope, his feathers helped him run faster. This may have led to the development of longer anterior limbs that allowed him to run faster or even skip short distances in the air. And so the "hands" became wings ... Probably more than 50 million years after the appearance of the first feathers, the ancestors of today's birds have risen in the sky.
Source: www.euroscientist.com , www.pixabay.com
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