The fossil evidence for dinosaurs
evolving into birds is not as
clear-cut as told in the media

We’ve been reporting on the phenomenon of “imaginary feathers” on dinosaurs for years. Imaginary feathers are the feathers that should be there according to phylogenetic trees, but are not visible. Sometimes what are labeled “feathers” on a fossil are integumentary structures, like barbs or quills on a tail, or fuzz on arms that could result from decayed skin. Calling these “protofeathers” gets the word feather into the headline to support the narrative that birds are dinosaurs in the public eye. Those “protofeathers,” though, are nothing like aerodynamically-precise pennaceous bird feathers used for powered flight.

See past articles here:

• Imaginary Feathers Found on Dinosaur (8 Feb 2006)
• Imaginary Feathers Found on ‘Turkey’ Dino (10 April 2006)
• Imaginary Dinosaur Feathers Found – Again! (13 June 2007)
• Imaginary Feathers Found on American Dinosaur (19 March 2014)
• Proof of Dinosaur Feathers? (9 December 2016)
• Pin the Feather on the Dinosaur (15 May 2017)
• The Dinosaurs that Didn’t Evolve (27 July 2017)
• Rethinking Dinosaurs (20 January 2023)
• Proving Evolution with Imaginary Facts (23 May 2024)

When true “flight” feathers are found on an alleged dinosaur fossil, there are two possibilities that should not be ruled out. (1) The species was an extinct flying bird (or perhaps a flightless bird like an ostrich), not a dinosaur. (2) The feathers were carved into the fossil, as in the case of Archaeoraptor— the fossil that embarrassed National Geographic into making a public retraction. Archaeoraptor was an evolutionary transitional fossil that was too good to be true! —because it wasn’t true. It was good for the evolutionary narrative, but not for the advance of science. The perpetrators of that hoax showed no shame, but continued pushing the “feathered dinosaur” narrative in a public display (6 May 2004).

A couple of other odd things pop up in news about feathered dinosaurs. One is how many are found in China (see “Ho-Hum, Another Feathered Dinosaur,” 25 Sept 2009). These are often published by the same scientists, particularly Xing Xu. But since birds have wings and can fly long distances, why aren’t more found around the world?

Another odd thing is how many “feathered dinosaurs” are brought to scientists by farmers or non-scientists, raising questions of provenance. Perhaps fraudsters have been getting better at doctoring fossils since the Archaeoraptor hoax. Are they paying poor farmers to bring them to scientists? (“For your protection, ask to remain anonymous!“). After all, how many farmers go looking for odd fossils? The fact that very few are found in situ with provenance data should demand extra caution.

With this background, let us look at the latest fossil of a “feathered, winged dinosaur” from China. At CEH, we try to keep an open mind about whether or not some dinosaurs had feathers. We just want solid evidence.

Independent assembly of the flight apparatus in a non-avian dinosaur clade (Wang et al., Nature Communications, 29 Sept 2026). This is the original paper and is open access. The new fossil is named Norellraptor barsboldi in honor of paleontologists Mark Norell and Rinchen Barsbold.

Readers can look at the evidence itself. Search for “feather” and you get this:

• “The discovery of feathered dinosaurs revolutionized the studies on the origin of birds and the evolution of their flight.” This is mere evolutionary hype.
• “The forelimb probably possesses asymmetrical pennaceous feathers, which are preserved medial to the right hand, but separated from the rest of the plumage.” Oh, ‘probably,’ they say? Probable to whom? Without a calculation of the probability, this is just imagination at work.
• “The feathers preserved in the distal end of the tail have a rachis-dominated morphology.” Translation: there were spines on the tail without barbs, barbules, and hooks characterizing true feathers.
• “The other preserved plumage is formed by straight, simple feathers, arranged tightly.” No barbs, barbules, or hooks. On the pictures they look fuzzy. Fuzzy wuzzy was not a feather.

The arbitrariness of these “feathers” didn’t stop popular media from launching into flights of fancy:

Spectacular feathered dinosaur fossil shows bird-like adaptations (New Scientist, 29 Sept 2026). Reporter James Woodford should be ashamed of this overhyped headline. He shows a large artist conception of a fully-fledged bird in flight with glorious feathers in color. This is artistic license run amok.

Woodford’s reproduction of the actual fossil from the paper has no caption explaining what the colored labels mean. Let’s help him out. The dots are assumed phylogenetic relationships with other fossils possessing imaginary feathers! A reader will struggle to see feathers on any of the other published figures of the fossil. The authors admit, “The exact length and detailed morphology of the plumage are difficult to be ascertained due to the bad preservation.”

To a Darwinist, what is difficult in the data is easy in the imagination.

Interestingly, the authors point out  that soft tissue has been preserved in places, particularly on a claw. How old, therefore, is this fossil? Can soft tissue survive tens of millions of Darwin Years?

New feathered, winged dinosaur from China challenges our theories on bird and dinosaur evolution (Nature Publishing Group via Phys.org, 29 Sept 2026). This article shows another figure from the published paper, but no indications of true feathers. One thing they do point out, though, is a problem: this fossil does not fit the expected developmental pattern for a flying creature (see next section).

A Phylogenetic Misfit

The main focus of the paper by Wang et al. is not the feathers, but the phylogeny. To what evolutionary lineage can they assign this fossil? Its collection of traits is weird. Does it belong to the same group as Microraptor, an extinct bird-like flying creature with true feathers? (See 9 Feb 2010). Or should they insert it into the “ground-dwelling theropods lacking the flight adaptations,” like cursorial coelurosaurs? Maybe its young ran up slopes with arms outstretched, calling on Father Charlie to give them wings (see 22 December 2003 and 28 March 2024).

At least Phys.org left the ancestry as an open question. They called in imaginary ‘selective pressures’ as a cause of the confusion:

These findings challenge the idea that microraptorines and birds inherited either a common flight apparatus or a shared developmental process that drove its evolution. The authors conclude that different selective pressures probably shaped the flight-related features of each lineage. Further fossil and bone-growth evidence will be needed to test how widespread the pattern was among bird-like dinosaurs.

If the test is located in Futureware, we can conclude that any speculation here is untested— and therefore unscientific.

New Scientist dodged the issue of a misfit:

While the new bird-like dinosaur shares many anatomical similarities with birds, there are also important differences, she says. “Its forelimb growth pattern is quite different from that of living birds.”

Analyses of N. barsboldi’s bone microstructure, its growth patterns and its evolutionary relationships show that the evolutionary sequences leading to flight adaptations in living birds and in bird-like dinosaurs were quite different, says Nguyen. “This is interesting, because it shows that the evolutionary path to flight was not just a linear one, but that these evolutionary innovations appeared independently.”

Well, Shazam! Ain’t evolution clever! Powered flight is so improbable it’s a challenge to imagine it happening once. But I’ll be a dagnab turkey. Evolution figured it out twice!

Wait a sec. If the feathers were only imaginary, then this creature didn’t fly. And if it didn’t fly, it didn’t have flight innovations. And if it didn’t have flight adaptations, it wasn’t related to birds. Any “evolutionary path” is imaginary.

Show us the feathers. The real feathers. And prove that the farmer (or his handlers) didn’t carve them.

The specimen was discovered by a local farmer near Lamadong Town (Jianchang County, western Liaoning, China), and donated to the museum of Hebei GEO University in 2023. The donor requested to remain anonymous. We checked the specimen’s integrity and ascertained the original fossil locality. The completeness and almost undisturbed articulation of the skeletal elements, combined with the presence of microraptorine synapomorphies in all anatomical regions unambiguously support the integrity of the specimen.

Convinced? No possibility of fraud? They’re saying, in effect, “It looks credible to us. It fits evolution. It must be genuine.”

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