According to Nature Communications, It seems that we finally have it… the rumoured feathered Psittacosaurus specimen I have been advancing is finally out… not like a half-porcupine this time, butbody covered in feathery, quill-like integument, combined with… scales. Yes, the two skin elements coexisted, as it would only be natural. Keratin rules! The main thesis of the exhibition Dinosaur rEvolution was the diversity of covering integument right at the base of Dinosauria, with quilled ornithischian heterodontosaurs like Kulindadromeus , Pegomastax or possibly even Hetetedontosaurus on one hand and and protofeathery Coelurosaurs, ancestors of the biggest carnivores in the planet, that also combined feathers with scales…. as the exhibition states: the key of the success of Dinosauria was not only the change of posture (making them unlike any reptile)… but also the diversity of skin strategies that almost consolidate the fact that dinosaurs were different in almost everything, including a different kind of metabolism.

This also gives credence to the still not accepted term “Ornithoscelida”, that would group the Ornithischians with Theropoda… leaving Saurischia to Sauropoda or relatives . But let’s not get ahoead of ourselves… in the meantime, for the exhibition the one that went ahead of himself was me: the new reconstruction of fully feathered/quilled juvenile psittacosaurs is featured for the first time in this Horniman Museum outing of the exhibition… and here are the mind-boggling published pictures of the specimen at last… another vindication of that old “porcupine” specimen I reconstructed in the year 2000 and the rumours that came with it.