Overview

• The new species, named Mirasaura grauvogeli, lived in Middle Triassic forests about 247 million years ago and belonged to the drepanosauromorph lineage of arboreal reptiles.
• Its dorsal crest consisted of densely overlapping skin appendages with a narrow central ridge but lacked the branched barbs characteristic of true feathers.
• Melanosome comparisons reveal pigment organelles in the crest that more closely resemble those in extant and fossil feathers than those in mammalian hair or modern reptile skin.
• Synchrotron imaging at the European Synchrotron reconstructed its bird-like skull and crest morphology, highlighting unexpected early complexity in reptile integument.
• The discovery, published in Nature, pushes back the origin of specialized skin outgrowths and prompts a reassessment of integumentary evolution in early amniotes.