Fluffy, fuzzy, rainbow-colored and fancy: meet the dinosaurs with feathers, and find out why so many dinosaurs looked more like big birds than lizards.
Quick Answer
Yes, lots of dinosaurs had feathers! Scientists have found dozens of kinds of feathered dinosaurs, from fluffy Yutyrannus, a 30-foot cousin of T. rex, to tiny rainbow-colored Caihong. Most couldn't fly. They used feathers to stay warm, show off and protect their eggs. Some feathered dinosaurs did learn to fly, and they became today's birds.
Feathered dinosaurs are dinosaurs whose fossils show feathers, fuzz or bristles on their bodies. Most of them belong to the theropods, the two-legged, mostly meat-eating group that includes T. rex, Velociraptor, and the ancestors of birds.
Not every dinosaur feather looked like a bird's feather. Some were simple fuzz, and others were stiff bristles or long ribbons. Here are the five main kinds, from simplest to fanciest:
1
Fuzz
Thin, hair-like strands, like the fluff on a baby chick.
Seen on: Yutyrannus, Sinosauropteryx
2
Bristles
Long, stiff spikes, a bit like the bristles on a brush.
Seen on: Psittacosaurus, Beipiaosaurus, Yi qi
3
Tufts
Many soft strands joined at the bottom, like a feather duster.
Seen on: Kulindadromeus
4
Vaned feathers
A center stick with flat sides, like a bird's tail feather.
Seen on: Caudipteryx, Citipati
5
Flight feathers
Lopsided feathers shaped to push against the air for flying.
Seen on: Microraptor, Archaeopteryx
Jump to a group: 🧸 Fluffy Fuzzballs · 🌿 Surprise! Feathered Plant-Eaters · 🦚 Fancy Show-Offs · 🪺 Feathered Raptors and Parents · 🪂 Strange Gliders
The simplest feathers looked like fuzzy hair. Even some big meat-eaters were covered in a fluffy coat.
Say it: YOO-tie-RAN-us · Means: “Beautiful feathered tyrant”
🪶 Feathers: Long, fuzzy strands up to 8 in (20 cm)
⭐ The biggest dinosaur ever found with feathers, and a cousin of T. rex! It lived somewhere chilly, so its fluffy coat probably kept it warm.
Say it: BAY-pyow-SORE-us · Means: “Beipiao lizard (a city in China)”
🪶 Feathers: Fuzzy coat plus long, stiff quills
⭐ A shaggy dinosaur with big claws that mostly ate plants. Long, stiff quill-like feathers poked out of its fluffy coat.
For a long time, scientists thought only meat-eaters had feathers. Then they found fuzz and bristles on plant-eaters too.
Say it: koo-LIN-dah-DROH-mee-us · Means: “Kulinda runner (a place in Russia)”
🪶 Feathers: Fuzz on its body, scales on its tail
⭐ A small plant-eater with fuzz on its body and scales on its tail. It made scientists wonder if lots of dinosaurs had some feathers.
Say it: SIT-ah-koh-SORE-us · Means: “Parrot lizard”
🪶 Feathers: Long bristles on top of its tail
⭐ It had a beak like a parrot and a row of long bristles on its tail, like a brush. Those bristles may have been an early kind of feather.
Some dinosaurs had colorful or extra-long feathers just for showing off, like peacocks do today.
Say it: CHY-hong · Means: “Rainbow with a big crest”
🪶 Feathers: Shiny rainbow neck feathers
⭐ Its neck feathers shimmered with rainbow colors, like a hummingbird's or a pigeon's neck. It also had a little bony crest on its head.
Say it: EP-ih-dex-IP-ter-ix · Means: “Display feather”
🪶 Feathers: Four long ribbon tail feathers
⭐ This tiny dinosaur couldn't fly, but it had four long ribbon-like tail feathers. It probably waved them to show off, like a bird of paradise.
Say it: caw-DIP-ter-ix · Means: “Tail feather”
🪶 Feathers: A fan of feathers on its tail and arms
⭐ It had a fan of feathers on its tail like a turkey. It also swallowed little stones to help grind up its food, just like chickens do today!
Raptors like Velociraptor and their cousins had real wing feathers, even though most of them couldn't fly.
Say it: jun-yoo-AHN-long · Means: “Zhenyuan's dragon (named after a fossil collector)”
🪶 Feathers: Big wing feathers, like a bird's
⭐ A close cousin of Velociraptor with big, bird-like wings. But its arms were short and its body was heavy, so it couldn't fly.
Say it: CHIT-ee-PAH-tee · Means: “Named after a dancing skeleton from Tibetan stories”
🪶 Feathers: Probably feathered arms and tail
⭐ Fossils show Citipati sitting on its nest with its arms spread over its eggs, just like a mother hen! Feathered arms would have kept the eggs safe.
A few tiny dinosaurs tried out the air. Some had feathered wings, and one even had wings like a bat!
Say it: ee-CHEE · Means: “Strange wing”
🪶 Feathers: Fuzzy feathers plus bat-like skin wings
⭐ A fuzzy little dinosaur with wings made of skin, like a bat's. It probably glided from tree to tree. No other dinosaur like it was known until 2015!
More feathered flyers, like four-winged Microraptor and Archaeopteryx, are on our flying dinosaurs page.
Staying warm
A fluffy coat works like a winter jacket. Yutyrannus lived in a chilly place where its feathers would have kept it cozy.
Showing off
Bright colors and long feathers helped dinosaurs attract a mate or say “stay away!”, like peacocks and parrots do.
Keeping eggs safe
Parents like Citipati sat on their nests and covered the eggs with feathered arms to keep them warm and shaded.
Running and climbing
Flapping feathered arms may have helped some dinosaurs balance, turn quickly, or scramble up steep slopes.
Learning to fly
Feathers came first and flying came later. Over millions of years, some small feathered dinosaurs became the first birds.
Feathers hold tiny color packets called melanosomes (meh-LAN-oh-sohms). They're so small you need a super-strong microscope to see them, but some fossils still have them! Their shapes tell scientists what color the feathers were. Here's what they found:
Feathered dinosaurs came in every size. Here's how long they were from nose to tail, compared with a chicken and a school bus. Sizes are scientists' best estimates.
Feathers pressed in stone
In northeast China, fine volcanic ash and lake mud buried animals so gently that the outlines of their feathers were saved. The first one, Sinosauropteryx, was found in 1996.
Quill knobs on bones
Big feathers leave little bumps where they attach to the arm bone. Velociraptor's arm has them, so we know it had wing feathers even without a feather fossil.
Trapped in amber
In 2016, scientists found a tiny feathered dinosaur tail trapped in amber, which is hardened tree sap. You can see every fluffy feather in 3D!
🐦 Feathers are one big clue that birds are dinosaurs. Find out why birds are living dinosaurs and how a chicken is related to T. rex.
Next time you find a feather on a walk, or hold a feather duster, take a close look together:
Then draw your own feathered dinosaur and pick its colors. Will it be a rainbow show-off or a fluffy fuzzball?
Lots of them! Velociraptor, Microraptor, Archaeopteryx, Sinosauropteryx, Caudipteryx, Citipati and the giant tyrannosaur Yutyrannus all had feathers. Most were meat-eating theropods, the dinosaur group that birds came from, but some plant-eaters like Kulindadromeus and Psittacosaurus had fuzz or bristles too.
Probably not much, at least as a grown-up. Patches of fossil T. rex skin show small, bumpy scales. Its smaller cousin Yutyrannus was covered in fuzzy feathers, though, so some scientists think baby T. rex may have been a little fluffy. Nobody knows for sure yet!
Yes. A Velociraptor arm bone has little bumps called quill knobs, where big wing feathers attached, just like on a bird's wing. Real Velociraptors were feathered and about the size of a turkey, much smaller than the scaly ones in movies.
Yutyrannus, a cousin of T. rex from China, is the biggest dinosaur found with feather fossils. It was about 30 feet (9 meters) long and weighed about as much as a car.
Most couldn't. They used their feathers for warmth, showing off and keeping eggs safe. A few small ones, like Microraptor, could glide or fly, and the feathered dinosaurs that learned to fly well became birds.
No. Many big dinosaurs, like Triceratops, Edmontosaurus and long-necked sauropods, had scaly skin. But feathers or fuzz turned up in so many kinds of dinosaurs that scientists are still finding out just how common they were.
Many famous dinosaur movies were made before most feathered dinosaur fossils were found, so filmmakers drew them scaly like lizards. Scientists found the first feathered dinosaur that wasn't a bird in China in 1996, and hundreds more have turned up since.
Image credits (via Wikimedia Commons): Caihong by Lucas-Attwell (CC BY-SA 4.0); Yutyrannus and Psittacosaurus by TotalDino (CC BY 4.0); Caudipteryx by TotalDino (CC BY-SA 4.0); Beipiaosaurus and Citipati by PaleoNeolitic (CC BY 4.0); Kulindadromeus by Tom Parker (CC BY-SA 4.0); Epidexipteryx by Nobu Tamura (CC BY-SA 3.0); Yi qi by Nobu Tamura (CC BY-SA 4.0); Zhenyuanlong by Emily Willoughby (CC BY-SA 4.0). Images resized.
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