Australian-Geographic-Magazine-September-Octobe..

ILLUSTRATION:

LIDA

XING;

FOSSIL

FEATHER:

MUSEUM

VICTORIA

September–October 2014 75

The majority of the 40-odd species of

known feathered dinosaurs discovered since

Sinosauropteryx in 1996 are from China and

Mongolia, although a smattering have been

found in the USA, Canada, Germany, Mada-

gascar and Siberia. Could Australia ever

yield dinosaur feathers? The answer is that

perhaps it already has. A fossil site near the

town of Koonwarra in Victoria’s Gippsland

has fi ne-grained sedimentary rocks and an

unusual level of preservation. Starting in

1961, a series of 12 fossilised feathers (left)

were found here, all dating to the Early

Cretaceous between 118 and 115 million

years ago. It was assumed these were bird

feathers, but, in light of all the new discov-

eries from China, it is now just as likely that

they are dinosaur feathers. Researchers led

by Dr Tom Rich at Museum Victoria now

have plans to return to the site to search for

the remains of entire feathered dinosaurs

(see ‘Why so few dinosaurs?’, page 41).

In 2010 Sinosauropteryx

became the fi rst-ever dinosaur to

be illustrated in its ‘true’ colours. Since then a series

of other feathered dinosaurs – including Archaeopteryx,

Microraptor and Anchiornis – have had their colours

determined using similar methods. Additionally, the stacking

and organisation of melanosomes has been used to show

that some dinosaurs and early birds had iridescent feathers.

The researchers used the same method to look

at the short, bristle-like feathers that appear

along the head, neck and back on the fossil of Early

Cretaceous dinosaur Sinosauropteryx. They also

looked at the feathers that form the tail stripes of

this 1.5m carnivore: the dark stripes contained only

phaeomelanosomes,^1 indicating they were

orange-brown; the pale stripes 2 contained none,

and were probably white.

SINOSAUROPTERYX

1

WILL W E EVER FIND FEATHER ED

DINOSAURS IN AUSTRALIA?

2

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ag0914p075_Johnsdinos - 75 2014-08-12T16:52:11+10:00