Why do we now believe most/all dinosaurs have feathers? Is it simply that we found fossilized feathers and hence assume all dinosaurs had feathers?
Thanks!
In: Biology
We have found fossil dinosaurs with fossilized feathers.
Since feathers have been found on different dinosaurs from different branches of the family tree, we can reasonably assume that the common evolutionary ancestor of all those branches (called a “clade”) also had feathers, and therefore all of its descendants probably did as well.
Birds, as one branch of those evolutionary descendants, therefore inherited their feathers from their dinosaur ancestors.
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