![]() This artist’s reconstruction was published in Science (“figure 4A/B”) to illustrate the researchers’ interpretation of their findings. “But, based on the size of the markings, we think the ‘wing feathers’ would have been much longer than the filamentous feathers.” 4 “We don't know how long the shafted feathers were on the adult ‘wings,’” Therrien said. 3 The team reports their distribution was consistent with what they would expect if the insertions of feathers on a bird’s bones fossilized. The little marks, 1.5 mm (less than 6/100 of an inch) wide, measured up to 6.5 mm (about ¼ inch) long. In addition to “filamentous feathers”-0.5 mm (less than 2/100 of an inch) wide and 15-50 mm (about ½ to 2 inches) long-the team found, not feathers, but “linear markings on the surfaces of the ulna and radius” 2 of one adult’s forelimb. But what did Darla Zelenitsky, François Therrien, and their colleagues really find? Hailed as the first feathered dinosaurs outside China and Germany, adult ornithomimids are said to have sported long feathered wings. Finally the idea took flight, leading to a full-fledged publication in Science. “It became the running joke.” 1 The three ostrich-like ornithomimids had been found in Upper Cretaceous deposits of Alberta, Canada. “If we were in China, we’d call these feathers,” said curator François Therrien, as he examined some Canadian dinosaurs from Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.
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