Pterosaurs “acquired flight in a burst”, according to a recent claim by evolutionary biologists. Pterosaurs are believed to be the first vertebrates to evolve the ability to fly – millions of years before birds and bats took off. An international team of researchers have used CT scans of pterosaur skull fossils to study their brain […]
Palaeontologists in Brazil have studied the head of a pterosaur named Tupandactylus imperator, andclaim to have found “simple and branched feathers” on the back of its crest. They examined these with an electron microscope and found they contained various shaped melanosomes – tiny vesicles containing the pigment melanin. Variation in the shape of melanosomes is […]