ELI5, Why didn’t paleontologists considered feathers on dinosaurs earlier even though archaeopteryx was discovered in 1860s ?
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The idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs has been around for a long time now, but also for a long time we had no solid evidence for feathers on dinosaurs which they evolved from. Of course paleontologists had educated guesses about them being related to theropods, and therefore that it could have been an ancestral trait, but in science evidence is king.
What paleontologists DID have fossils of was skin imprints of bony scutes and scales. Naked dinos.
So it took until after the 90s, when fossil evidence of feathered dinosaurs that were not a bird transitional form was found, that the suspicions were finally confirmed.
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