Epidexipteryx is one of the more surprising broad spectrum dino finds. It’s a dinosaur with display feathers, but no flight feathers. It dates from Middle to Late Jurassic, and it would have been for enthusiasts only as a pet.
Epidexipteryx comes from China. About the size of a pigeon, it has a very mixed look. The reconstruction includes four feathers bigger than Epidexipteryx itself, colored proto-feathers which look much like fur or down, and a beak with teeth. It’s a biped, with arms ending in pretty functional-looking claws. Otherwise, you'd have your basic Dinosaur of Paradise.
The BBC explains the science, which has intrigued paleo-buffs:
The discovery highlights the diversity of species present in the Middle to Late Jurassic, just before birds arose.
Dr Angela Milner, associate keeper of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum, London, said: "This exquisitely preserved fossil is an exciting and totally unexpected find.
"It shows that feathers were likely being used for ornamentation for many millions of years before they were modified for flight.
"It provides fascinating evidence of evolutionary experiments with feathers that were going on before small dinosaurs finally took to the air and became birds."
“Experiments” is an understatement. In Australia, we had a version of Allosaurus which not only survived into the Cretaceous, but also had feathers of some sort. These were quite possibly a version of fur for dinosaurs, because Australia’s feathered dinos were living a lot further south than the continent is now, near Antarctica. The small bird-form dinosaurs also occur in many other better known forms, including a thing called Psittacosaurus, which means literally “parrot lizard”, and there's no reason to wonder why it was given that name.
The birdlike dinos were sometimes so close to birds that there's a Cretaceous dinosaur which had an anatomy which if it had feathers, would be called an ostrich, not a dinosaur.
Epidexipteryx seems to date from the era circa Archaeopteryx, the famous first bird, and the basic morphology, leaving out the tail feathers, isn’t so drastically different, if you consider a prototype for Archaeopteryx.
Which is exactly what Epidexipteryx seems to be:
Many feathered dinosaurs have been unearthed at the now famous fossil site in Liaoning Province in China. These include the squirrel-sized creature called Microraptor, which is thought to be a key discovery in the story of how dinosaurs led to birds. Microraptor used the long feathers on all four of its limbs to glide or parachute from tree to tree, scientists believe.
Epidexipteryx, on the other hand, was a primitive, flightless member of the avialae clade.
Sort of a dinosaur missing link, and obviously a highly speciated (speciation is a creation of a subspecies from an original species) form of its kind, given the well developed display feathers.
Dr Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences and an author of the study) said: "Although possessing many derived features seen in birds... [Epidexipteryx] shows some striking features... not known in any other theropod.
Theropods are the dinosaur species which produced the birds. This level of diversity in theropods is a pretty dramatic demonstration of a range of evolutionary paths, and the little dinosaur is a quite different ball game in terms of its physical characteristics.
It’s starting to look like this little guy was one of the other options for birds. You can expect to hear some further revelations as this paper does the rounds.
Just consider, next time you see a bird flying by, you could have had Epidexipteryx instead.
