Overview

• The formal description in Nature identifies Mirasaura grauvogeli as a small arboreal reptile from about 247 million years ago with a prominent dorsal crest.
• Researchers reexamined century-old fossils at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum using advanced microscopy to reveal fern-like skin outgrowths lacking feather branching.
• Microscopic analysis detected melanosomes within the crest’s tubes, evidencing complex pigmentation mechanisms similar to those in true feathers.
• This discovery extends the emergence of sophisticated integumentary structures at least 100 million years before the earliest known dinosaur feathers.
• Ongoing studies aim to clarify the crest’s role in visual display and its implications for the evolutionary relationships among early reptiles.