ZAP’S FACTS!
FEATHERED

Sinosauropteryx was the first feathered dinosaur ever found.

We even know it had a ginger-and-white striped tail.

2 min read
Sinosauropteryx was the first feathered dinosaur ever found.
THE FULL STORY

Until 1996, every illustration of a dinosaur showed scaly skin. Feathers belonged to birds. Then a farmer in northeastern China showed paleontologists a fossil of a small turkey-sized dinosaur he’d dug out of a slab of rock. And around the edges of the skeleton, you could clearly see thin fuzzy filaments - feathers.

That dinosaur was Sinosauropteryx, and it was the first feathered dinosaur the world had ever seen. It changed everything. Within a few years, dozens more feathered dinosaurs were discovered in the same Chinese region, and the modern picture of dinosaurs as fluffy, colorful, bird-like animals started to take over.

Scientists later analyzed the preserved pigment cells in Sinosauropteryx’s feathers and figured out its colors: a reddish-ginger upper body with a banded ginger-and-white tail like a lemur’s. A real dinosaur, in full color.

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