Majestic Triassic Reptiles Boasted Primitive Wings

Reptiles from the central Triassic boasted an elaborate coat of arms made of feather-like filaments, appearing over 100 million years before the first feathered dinosaurs.

The findings include two fossils and a total of 80 skeletons and crested fossils, uncovered between the 1930s and 1970s by a private collector named Louis Grovogel in the Vosges mountains of northeastern France.

It wasn’t until 2018 that Stephen Speakman from the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History and his team could examine the fossils.

They are now officially describing and naming it Mirasaura grauvogeli, with its impressive coat inspired by the Latin term for remarkable lizards.

Discovering such advanced skin structures in reptiles dating back 247 million years was quite unexpected, according to Spiekman.

“It is indeed a remarkably luxurious structure, larger than the entire body of the creature. The summit consisted of individual appendages that closely overlapped each other, resembling the feathers of a bird’s wing,” he notes.

While the appendages of M. grauvogeli share a feather-like appearance, they also exhibit significant distinctions. “In feathers, this differentiation occurs via a complex branching process that creates feather barbs, barbules, and hooks. However, such branching is absent in Mirasaura appendages,” Spiekman explains.

The most well-preserved specimen of M. grauvogeli measures less than 15 centimeters in length, although Spiekman suggests it is likely a juvenile based on certain skeletal features.

One fossilized coat is three times the length of the best-preserved juvenile, suggesting that M. grauvogeli could grow substantially larger. Spiekman estimates adults might reach a size of 50 to 100 centimeters.

“The overall structure of Mirasaura indicates it was likely an agile climber, akin to a chameleon or a tree-dwelling mammal,” he explains.

John Long from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who was not involved in the research, describes it as a “truly remarkable” prehistoric species.

“It illustrates that evolution was experimenting with creating wings using reptilian skin, albeit imperfectly,” says Long. “These grand decorations on its back would have served for signaling and visual interaction rather than flight.”