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Zixiao Yang, Postdoctoral researcher, University College Cork

New fossil brings us a step closer to unravelling the mystery of feather evolution

The studied _Psittacosaurus_ under natural (upper half) and UV light (lower half). Zixiao Yang, Author provided

Strong but light, beautiful and precisely structured, feathers are the most complex skin appendage that ever evolved in vertebrates. Despite the fact humans have been playing with feathers since prehistory, there’s still a lot we don’t understand about them.

Our new study found that some of the first animals with feathers also had scaly skin like reptiles.

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