Challenging the dinosaur-bird link.

• Position: Evolution - Longisquama insignis; oldest feathered animal - Brief Article

Discovery of the oldest animal ever known to have feathers, which may have been the ancestor of birds, but clearly was not a dinosaur, calls into serious question many theories about an evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds. Paleontologists at Oregon State University, Corvallis, say the animal, Longisquama insignis, was a small reptile with feathers. It glided among trees in central Asia 220,000,000 years ago, around the time of the earliest dinosaurs and 75,000,000 years before the first bird. This discovery may answer some major questions about the earliest development of birds, compel changes in widely accepted theories of evolution, and ruffle some feathers in museum exhibits around the world.

"These are some amazing fossils, and at the very least they prove that feathers did not evolve in dinosaurs," indicates John Ruben, professor of zoology. "The supposed link between dinosaurs and birds is pretty entrenched in paleontology, but it's not as solid as the public has been led to believe." While the fossil evidence does not conclusively prove that this animal was indeed the ancestor of flying birds, Ruben admits, it is clearly consistent with that possibility.

"We can identify certain structures in these fossils that you only find in feathers and just don't see anywhere else," explains paleontologist Terry Jones, co-author of the study. "So we're quite sure we're looking at the earliest feather. But beyond that, this animal looks like an ancestral bird even if you ignore the feathers. The teeth, pectoral structure, neck, and skull are just like those of birds."

The fossils themselves were found in the then-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in 1969 and had actually been lying in a drawer in Moscow for decades, initially identified as an animal with scales, not feathers. The scientists chanced across them at a touring exhibit of Russian fossils in 1999. "I had been asked to give a talk on dinosaur biology in a Kansas City [Mo.] shopping mall where this exhibit was," Ruben points out. "Terry Jones and I took one look at these fossils and we realized immediately this was a very old animal with feathers. We stayed up all night in a vacant store in the mall to study it."

About another year of research...