Dino fossil found with preserved tail feathers and skin

A partial dinosaur skeleton was recently discovered at the Upper Cretaceous Dinosaur Park Formation in Canada, but what makes this fossil special is that its tail feathers and soft tissue were also preserved.

The Ornithomimus skeleton was described in a study published in the journal Cretaceous Research. The researchers note that the underside of the tail and the hind legs up to mid-femur didn’t have any feathers, similar to modern-day ostriches, which led them to hypothesize that maybe Ornithomimus also used their legs to regulate their body temperature.

“We now know what the plumage looked like on the tail, and that from the mid-femur down, it had bare skin,” said Aaron van der Reest, the undergraduate student who made the initial discovery. (https://uofa.ualberta.ca/science/science-news/2015/october/prehistoric-plumage-patterns) “Ostriches use bare skin to thermoregulate. Because the plumage on this specimen is virtually identical to that of an ostrich, we can infer that Ornithomimus was likely doing the same thing, using feathered regions on their body to maintain body temperature. It would’ve looked a lot like an ostrich.”

The finding provides additional information about the possible connection between dinosaurs and modern birds. It could also help provide insight into how animals evolve to adapt to changing environments. — Bea Montenegro/TJD, GMA News