Resolving dinosaur phylogenies with fossil evidence of protofeathers

According to this article in Nature, a dinosaur skeleton was found in western Liaoning Province, China, that shows evidence of feathers.

Figure 1: Overview of a Tianyulong confuciusi skeleton.

What makes this particular find of a feathered dinosaur important is that it extends the known time period and geographic range of feathered dinosaurs. All previous records list feathered dinosaurs as living in Africa in the early Jurassic period. Now we know that they were also living in Asia, and were around all the way up to the early Cretaceous.

Figure 2: Close-up on evidence of protofeather structures.

This fossil of Tianyulong confuciusi (see figure 1 above) is an incomplete skeleton, but nevertheless it was detailed enough to conclusively prove that feathered dinosaurs (see figure 2 above) lived from the early Jurassic period to the early Cretaceous period, and in an area from Africa to Asia.

Finding this fossil also resolved the dispute over phylogeny. Tianyulong is closely related to Heterodontosaurus and Echinodon.  (See figure 3 below.)

Figure 3: The resolved phylogeny (or at least more resolved than before).

The filamentous integumentary structures are clear evidence that these dinosaurs had protofeathers. However, Zheng suggests that these feathers were geared more towards multicolored displays than for the flight we see in modern birds.

Source: Zheng, X.-T., You, H.-L., Xu, X. & Dong, Z.-M. An Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid dinosaur with filamentous integumentary structures. Nature 458, 333–336 (2009).

DOI: 10.1038/nature07856.

Hyperlink to original article:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7236/full/nature07856.html.

Link to extra supplementary information with cool photographs: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7236/suppinfo/nature07856.html.