Palaeontologists discovered the creature, often known as the “parrot lizard”, had reptile-like skin in areas of the body without feathers. They said the findings, published in the journal ...

The earliest feathered dinosaurs may have evolved their bird-like features while still retaining lizard-like scales on other parts of their body. This theory is based on the discovery of a ...

In the meantime, other scientists sought to illuminate the origin of feathers by examining the scales of modern reptiles, the closest living relatives of birds. Both scales and feathers are flat.

Scientists now believe that feathers didn’t just appear suddenly in birds. Instead, they evolved step by step from much ...

“People were fighting about the fact that reptiles either lost it, or birds and mammals independently developed them,” Milinkovitch told The New York Times. “Now we are lucky enough to put this debate ...

Biologists have long known that feathers and hairs both start as structures called placodes. In reptiles, however, biologists had found distinct skin areas that yielded scales but no placodes.

The first simple feathers may have originally served as ... investigating why those birds survived when all other feathered reptiles vanished. The debris from the impact caused widespread ...

Birds are warm-blooded animals with feathers, wings ... blackbirds, ducks and owls. Reptiles are animals that have dry, scaly skin and are cold-blooded. This means their body temperature changes ...