News Paleontology

This dinosaur may have shed its feathers like modern songbirds

The first fossilized signs of sequential molting support the idea that Microraptor was a flier

Illustration of what Microraptor looked like

New fossil analyses of Microraptor, a nonbird feathered dinosaur that lived about 120 million years ago, reveal its molting behavior — and suggest the dinosaur was a frequent flyer.

Durbed/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Carolyn Gramling

A patch of three oddly short feathers spotted among the fossilized plumage of Microraptor may be the first evidence of a nonbird dinosaur molting.