Did Dinosaurs Really Have Feathers?
Did Dinosaurs Really Have Feathers?
Feathers likely developed about 250 million years ago.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Feathers likely developed about 250 million years ago.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Humans might be related to these weird, hairless dogs.
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© Fun Travel TV (A Britannica Publishing Partner)A trip along the Dinosaur Trail in central Queensland, Australia. Stops include Richmond, Hughenden, and Winton.
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Great Museums Television (A Britannica Publishing Partner)A discussion of the competition among collectors and museums for dinosaur bones, including those of Sue, from the documentary The Dinosaur Wars.
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University College Cork, Ireland (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Excavating fossils of feathered dinosaurs from the Middle Jurassic Epoch.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Archaeopteryx is the earliest known dinosaur that's also a bird.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn about the history of people discovering fossils and the coining of the term dinosaur.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Birds descended from dinosaurs, but they don't have their ancestors' bite.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Findings about a small bird have scientists rethinking dino diets.
News •
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• Dec. 10, 2025, 3:14 AM ET (ABC News (Australia))
Transcript
Tyrannosaurus rex. Tyrant king of the primordial forests.
The apex by which all other predators are measured: a horrible, gaping maw with foot-long daggers for teeth, a voracious appetite for the flesh of lesser beings, and...
...feathers?
While it’s still up for debate whether T-rex specifically had feathers, we’ve known for quite some time that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
With that in mind, we know that feathers had to show up somewhere. So, where did they come from?
The precursors of bird feathers were straight, dense, filament-like structures, which were mostly made of keratin, the same stuff your hair and fingernails are made of.
Today, the typical feather consists of a central shaft, called a rachis, with serial paired barbs forming a flat, curved surface, which is called a vane.
Each barb branches out into barbules, which link to one another by hooks. This interconnected structure stiffens the vane.
So, we understand how feathers evolved, but how do we know that dinosaurs had them?
Well, in the 1990s, around the same time as a certain classic film showed us scaly, non-feathered dinosaurs, the first dinosaur fossils with feather-like structures were discovered.
Since then, further discoveries have convinced some scientists that all dinosaurs had a feathery covering on some part of their body, kind of like how all mammals have hair, but only some are really hairy.
While it seems that dinosaurs were growing feathers as 180 million years ago, they probably weren’t the first creatures to have them.
Pterosaurs, another group of archosaurs (or “ruling reptiles”) like the dinosaurs, may have developed feathers earlier than their dino cousins did.
Paleontology is still looking for clues, but feathers likely developed about 250 million years ago!
By the time dinosaurs jumped on the feather bandwagon, they were so last eon!
Of course, just because dinosaurs had feathers doesn’t make them any less fearsome.
But instead of picturing a giant lizard, you might want to start thinking of something with a bit more plumage.
The apex by which all other predators are measured: a horrible, gaping maw with foot-long daggers for teeth, a voracious appetite for the flesh of lesser beings, and...
...feathers?
While it’s still up for debate whether T-rex specifically had feathers, we’ve known for quite some time that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
With that in mind, we know that feathers had to show up somewhere. So, where did they come from?
The precursors of bird feathers were straight, dense, filament-like structures, which were mostly made of keratin, the same stuff your hair and fingernails are made of.
Today, the typical feather consists of a central shaft, called a rachis, with serial paired barbs forming a flat, curved surface, which is called a vane.
Each barb branches out into barbules, which link to one another by hooks. This interconnected structure stiffens the vane.
So, we understand how feathers evolved, but how do we know that dinosaurs had them?
Well, in the 1990s, around the same time as a certain classic film showed us scaly, non-feathered dinosaurs, the first dinosaur fossils with feather-like structures were discovered.
Since then, further discoveries have convinced some scientists that all dinosaurs had a feathery covering on some part of their body, kind of like how all mammals have hair, but only some are really hairy.
While it seems that dinosaurs were growing feathers as 180 million years ago, they probably weren’t the first creatures to have them.
Pterosaurs, another group of archosaurs (or “ruling reptiles”) like the dinosaurs, may have developed feathers earlier than their dino cousins did.
Paleontology is still looking for clues, but feathers likely developed about 250 million years ago!
By the time dinosaurs jumped on the feather bandwagon, they were so last eon!
Of course, just because dinosaurs had feathers doesn’t make them any less fearsome.
But instead of picturing a giant lizard, you might want to start thinking of something with a bit more plumage.
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