Early Feathers

We always love a fossil that we haven't talked about or a fossil that has had a lengthy absence and we are talking about it for the first time in a really long time. This may or may not be one of those times; I feel like we have covered Protarchaeopteryx robusta before, but searches of the entries on the blog turned up nothing. That is almost 8 years worth of entries to search though, and considering that with this year as an exception of every day entries, that is a search of almost 2500 entries. Regardless, the small "Before Archaeopteryx" feathered theropod is an interesting dinosaur that was discovered in the Yixian Formation of China in rocks that belong to the Aptian age of the Early Cretaceous (approximately 124.6 MYA). There are questions about the validity of the animal; some discussion has involved its relationship to another small dinosaur, Incisivosaurus (we may visit this animal next week to follow up). However, with that relationship in question and not cemented or ignored, another relationship is still alternatively proposed for Protarchaeopteryx; that this animal represents a basal oviraptorosaurid. Despite this ancestral mystery, we do have some idea about what the animal ate (likely mostly herbivorous but sometimes supplementing this diet with meat) and what it was covered in (symmetrical, flightless feathers) and we can therefore form a few hypotheses about the way that Protarchaeopteryx lived in and interacted with its environment and other animals.

Protarchaeopteryx holotype at the Geological Museum of China
CC BY-SA 4.0