The "feathered dinosaur" has turned out to be a feathered fallacy.
This brief half-column was tucked away on page 13 in New Scientist:
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Feathered fallacy
THE enigmatic structures on the back of a small "feathered dinosaur"
found last year are not true feathers, say four leading American
palaeontologists who have just returned from examining fossil
specimens in China. John Ostrom of Yale University says they are
long parallel arrays of fibres that lack the branching pattern of modern
feathers.
The feathered dinosaur found in China's Liaoning province, was
greeted by some palaeontologists as a missing link between dinosaurs
and birds ("Birds do it...did dinosaurs?", New Scientist, 1 February, p
27). They argued that some warm-blooded dinosaurs evolved downy
feathers, which were later adapted for flight. But other experts were
not convinced.
Hoping to resolve the question, the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia sent Ostrom and three other experts to China to examine
the fossils. Exactly what the little dinosaur had on its back remains a
mystery, which leaves the precise relationship between dinosaurs and
birds uncertain.
("Feathered fallacy", New Scientist, Vol 154 No 2077, 12 April 1997,
p13)
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God bless.
Steve
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