#pycnofibers

[tine5]

[alphynix]

Pterosaurs May Have Had Brightly Colored Feathers, Exquisite Fossil Reveals

An amazingly well-preserved fossil suggests the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs also had some type of feather or feather precursor

[nathan-e-rogers]

Rhamphorhynchus 01

Late Jurassic, Europe

A pair of Rhamphorhynchus pterosaurs in the first light of dawn.

Made in Blender.

[colossalsummer]

Where the heck is all the Gildie fanart

[missmeltycat]

Got inspired by @bookrat to post my old dino art I made as a gift to my husband a few years back. xD

We’re both huge dino, dragon and bird fans, so I merges them a little. ;) Nothing horribly accurate, but I enjoyed working on this.

[onlyscarcelyscaly]

Now that it's been uh...exactly two months, by the looks of it, here's the final version of my Batrachognathus painting. Just finished the wings no more than half an hour ago, and I hope they make sense anatomically. Cheers! Oils on blue foamboard 2019-2020

[alphynix]

Stunning fossils show pterosaurs had primitive feathers like dinosaurs

When dinosaurs ruled the land, pterosaurs occupied the skies. Now we know they had feathers, suggesting plumage has a much deeper history than we had thought

Here’s the full paper for those interested: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0728-7.epdf?shared_access_token=wsj4P5pKcG3NWkJW-AmpRtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OhuDOmy4G-1OHvOkIfGGVa07EOVX4CcCn1ujEjIGdNkUvzBZug8tPjjaWNG4bQuVMptkL5xktsqRha5pWB32jiQniNwh5I29FN9QSZBgCnOnLfkJRv_sadxY_WtSQWxj4%3D

So now we have clear evidence that pterosaur fuzz looked an awful lot more like dinosaur feathers than previously thought, with several different types of branching filaments and even downy structures. Either this is some remarkable convergent evolution, or -- probably more likely -- fluff originated at least as far back as the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs in the earliest Triassic.

[bernica42]

Why do people give dragons bat wings, and not pterosaur wings? Why don’t dragons have pycnofibers?