UCC scientists part of international team that discovered 250-million-year-old 'wonder reptile'
The international research team, which included experts from University College Cork (UCC), discovered the new species of fossil reptile in France, and dated to the Triassic period some 250 million years ago, with a bizarre plume on its back that is similar to feathers.
But this creature existed some 70 million years before the oldest fossil feathers.
The discovery has completely disrupted our view of the evolution of skin and feathers in reptiles, the team said, as they published their findings in the journal Nature, on Tuesday.
The study was led by scientists Dr Stephan Spiekman and Prof Rainer Schoch from the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, along with an international team from Germany, Italy, France and the USA. The team included UCC palaeontologists Prof Maria McNamara, Dr Valentina Rossi, and Dr Tiffany Slater.
Their discovery centres on the 247-million-year-old Mirasaura grauvogeli, from the Grès à Voltzia area in northeastern France.
Prof Maria McNamara and Dr Valentina Rossi from UCC with a fossil specimen showing the Mirasaura crest. Picture: UCC
Scans of its fossil show the reptile had a delicate, bird-like skull with a largely toothless snout, large forward-facing eyes and a high, domed skull. These features, plus its grasping forelimbs, point to a tree-dwelling lifestyle and diet of insects and other small prey.
But it also had a bizarre showy plume of long outer layer structures on its back that are similar to feathers.
The UCC team analysed the fossil's outer layer structures using scanning electron microscopy and synchrotron X-ray analyses, focusing on their preserved melanosomes — cell organelles that contain melanin pigments that are common in skin, hair, feathers and internal organs of fossil and modern vertebrate animals.
They discovered the melanosomes in this reptile are similar in shape to those in feathers, but not mammal hair or reptilian skin.
'We know that in modern animals, melanosome shape is closely linked to tissue type,' Dr Rossi said.
'We can therefore be confident that the Mirasaura structures share some common developmental features with feathers.'
Unlike feathers in modern birds, however, the Mirasaura structures lack branching, showing instead a simple long feature that superficially resembles the shaft of modern bird feathers.
Prof McNamara, leader of the UCC team and coauthor of the study, said: 'We were looking in the right time window, but we were shocked to find long integumentary structures in a completely different group of ancient reptiles.'
Co-author Dr Slater said this creature forces scientists back to the drawing board for when feather-like structures first evolved.
'Mirasaura reveals a deeper, more complex evolutionary story than we ever expected," she said.
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Irish Examiner
15 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
UCC scientists part of international team that discovered 250-million-year-old 'wonder reptile'
Irish palaeontologists have helped discover an ancient "wonder reptile" which completely disrupts the scientific view of how skin and feathers evolved in reptiles. The international research team, which included experts from University College Cork (UCC), discovered the new species of fossil reptile in France, and dated to the Triassic period some 250 million years ago, with a bizarre plume on its back that is similar to feathers. But this creature existed some 70 million years before the oldest fossil feathers. The discovery has completely disrupted our view of the evolution of skin and feathers in reptiles, the team said, as they published their findings in the journal Nature, on Tuesday. The study was led by scientists Dr Stephan Spiekman and Prof Rainer Schoch from the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, along with an international team from Germany, Italy, France and the USA. The team included UCC palaeontologists Prof Maria McNamara, Dr Valentina Rossi, and Dr Tiffany Slater. Their discovery centres on the 247-million-year-old Mirasaura grauvogeli, from the Grès à Voltzia area in northeastern France. Prof Maria McNamara and Dr Valentina Rossi from UCC with a fossil specimen showing the Mirasaura crest. Picture: UCC Scans of its fossil show the reptile had a delicate, bird-like skull with a largely toothless snout, large forward-facing eyes and a high, domed skull. These features, plus its grasping forelimbs, point to a tree-dwelling lifestyle and diet of insects and other small prey. But it also had a bizarre showy plume of long outer layer structures on its back that are similar to feathers. The UCC team analysed the fossil's outer layer structures using scanning electron microscopy and synchrotron X-ray analyses, focusing on their preserved melanosomes — cell organelles that contain melanin pigments that are common in skin, hair, feathers and internal organs of fossil and modern vertebrate animals. They discovered the melanosomes in this reptile are similar in shape to those in feathers, but not mammal hair or reptilian skin. 'We know that in modern animals, melanosome shape is closely linked to tissue type,' Dr Rossi said. 'We can therefore be confident that the Mirasaura structures share some common developmental features with feathers.' Unlike feathers in modern birds, however, the Mirasaura structures lack branching, showing instead a simple long feature that superficially resembles the shaft of modern bird feathers. Prof McNamara, leader of the UCC team and coauthor of the study, said: 'We were looking in the right time window, but we were shocked to find long integumentary structures in a completely different group of ancient reptiles.' Co-author Dr Slater said this creature forces scientists back to the drawing board for when feather-like structures first evolved. 'Mirasaura reveals a deeper, more complex evolutionary story than we ever expected," she said. Read More Ireland to ban industrial sprat fishing in inshore waters from October 2026
Irish Post
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Irish Examiner
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In a classic case of 'shifting baseline syndrome', these impressive fish have become extinct in very recent times, yet we have already forgotten they were ever here in the first place. Media coverage of a sturgeon caught in Kerry in April 1966. Left to right: Cork Examiner, April 4; Irish Press, April 5; Kerryman, April 9, 1966 The first I learned about sturgeon was in the context of early hunter gatherers across Europe and Asia. These palaeolithic people thrived by making expert use of the living resources available to them. Several species of sturgeon, all enormous fish, were a valuable resource indeed. Their eggs, now known as caviar, could be harvested from females without harming the fish. The flesh of a large sturgeon could feed a clan, as well as being preserved by smoking and drying. Their skin was cured and used to make shimmering, silver-coloured clothing. An Atlantic sturgeon But sturgeon go back a lot longer in history than even the palaeolithic period. In fact, sturgeon were among the largest inhabitants of freshwater ecosystems as long as 150 million years ago. In more recent history, we know that the monks at Clonmacnoise caught and ate sturgeon from the River Shannon in the the 6th and 7th centuries onwards. Sturgeon also swam up the Boyne, the Barrow, the Suir and the Blackwater, with records showing that they were common in Irish inshore waters during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries too. Like salmon, sturgeon are migratory. Much of their lives are spent out at sea, feeding on fish and crustaceans. When its time to spawn, from March through August, they swim up into freshwater rivers. The full moon in August is known as the 'sturgeon moon', when sturgeon were traditionally caught across Europe and North America in freshwater lakes and rivers. A fisherman stands next to his boat that is filled with sturgeon by the Volga River in Astrakhan, Russia. Picture: Robert Nickelsberg / Liaison After millions of years roaming freely through both freshwater and marine habitats, these ecological icons are now critically endangered, on the verge of disappearing forever. Having been celebrated for as long as humans have existed, and harvested for millennia at sustainable levels, these resilient fish were not able to withstand the might of 20th century trawlers. Their demise has come about as a result of too many fish being caught in commercial fisheries, the same activity that has contributed to the collapse of Atlantic salmon, cod, herring and whiting during the 1980s and 90s. Because sturgeon take more than a decade to reach sexual maturity, impacted populations are unable to recover quickly, making them exceptionally vulnerable to overfishing. Another issue that impacts sturgeon is when their access to spawning habitats is blocked off by damns and weirs, depriving them of the opportunity to reproduce. 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Irish Examiner, February 17, 2012 Rare fish causes stir in Dingle According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the first returning fish from the releases have been observed entering the river since 2021. It is as yet unknown whether these reintroductions have been successful in reestablishing wild populations. In 2023, the Irish Wildlife Trust together with the Blue Marine Foundation published a report detailing the history of sturgeon here and the potential for reintroduction. They have been calling on the Government to be actively involved in Europe wide initiatives to save sturgeon from extinction. Now that two sturgeon have been recorded so close to the Kerry coast, it may be time for this call to action to be taken more seriously. Under the EU Habitats Directive, Ireland is obliged to assess the feasibility of reintroducing sturgeon here. The measures needed to facilitate a successful reintroduction would include improvements to water quality, as spawning habitats have been clogged up with silt and deprived of essential oxygen due to excess nutrients from intensive agriculture. Barriers to migration would also need to be addressed, giving sturgeon, along with wild Atlantic salmon and European eel, free passage to navigate upstream to their natal spawning grounds. A cohesive network of marine protected areas (MPAs) would be needed too, protection that could give marine ecosystems a chance to recover. If all of this sounds like a major effort, it would be. State agencies, scientists, fishers, farmers, and conservation groups would all be required to participate proactively. Restoring rivers and coastal habitats to a state in which they could once again sustain viable populations of salmon and sturgeon is within reach. The benefits of embarking on ambitious ecosystem scale ecological restoration would be far-reaching.
