Reuters, W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 8

One of the earliest birds ever found used its feathers to fly, Chinese
scientists reported Thursday in a paper that
other experts said laid to rest any ideas that
modern birds evolved from dinosaurs.

But scientists will probably continue to ruffle feathers
over the origin-of-birds debate, which heats up every few
months as reports come out on fossils of what look like
birds.

In the latest paper, published in the journal Science,
Fucheng Zhang and Zhonghe Zhou of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences in Beijing say they found a 120
million-year-old bird that clearly had feathers and that
clearly flew.

Dug up from an ancient lakebed in China's Hebei
Province, the starling-sized bird is called Protopteryx
fengningensis.

"The body of Protopteryx was extensively covered by
feathers, which were preserved as carbonized traces or
structured imprints," Zhang and Zhou wrote in their paper.
"The down feathers almost covered the whole body."

Pelvis Made for Flying They said it had several features in common with modern
flying birds, such as a procoracoid process, a structure of
the pelvis.

"In modern birds, the development of the procoracoid
is an indicator of flight ability," they wrote. "Poor fliers
such as pheasants have a reduced procoracoid. True
fliers, such as perching birds and hawks, have a
well-developed procoracoid."

The feathers on the creature have many scale-like
qualities, which the researchers say show that feathers
evolved from scales in distinct stages.

They propose that feathers evolved through four
stages, in which scales became elongated, developed a
central shaft, sprouted strands called barbs one each side,
and finally developed a more complex network of smaller
strands called barbules.

Protopteryx's feathers look like they come from
somewhere in the middle of this process.

'Dino-Fuzz' Was Not Feathers
Alan Feduccia, a bird expert at the University of North
Carolina who has led the argument that birds did not
descend from dinosaurs, calls the paper "extraordinarily
important."

"Here we have what could well be an intermediate
stage in the evolution of feathers and one of most intriguing
things about them is they are quite scale-like," Feduccia
said in a telephone interview.

"Beyond question it was a flying bird," he added. "I
think it'll stir the pot a little bit."

Feduccia said it helps show that feathered dinosaurs,
thought by some to have been the ancestors of modern
birds, were no such thing.

"In a sense they really tell us that recent discoveries in
China, these dinosaurs with putative feathers, what they
call dino-fuzz, really could have nothing to do with the
origin of feathers."

Conclusion Up in the Air He thinks the structures found on some dinosaur fossils
may represent collagen or some other substance, not
feathers, as some scientists have proposed.

Feduccia helped write a controversial report this past
June on a 220-million-year-old animal called
Longisquama that he and colleagues said had feathers.
Other scientists have argued with the conclusion.

Feduccia says Thursday's paper supports his argument
that birds descend from an ancestor that pre-dates the
dinosaur.

"The true origin of birds is still up in the air," he said.

POWRÓT