Dinosaurs among us. We call them birds. At least thinks most paleontologists. But where did the wings?

New discoveries suggest that and the wings and feathers appeared much earlier than previously thought, possibly, to attract members of the opposite sex or protect broods.

Details of the origin of birds and flight fiercely debated, but scholars generally agree that birds are a group of dinosaurs called Maniraptora; some of them had feathers and wings and probably could fly. The microraptor, discovered in China, the most notable example. By the way, almost all of feathered dinosaurs were found in Liaoning province and Inner Mongolia, that is in the northeast of China, where fine-grained lacustrine deposits provide excellent preservation of fossils. Exceptions are few, and they are mostly from Germany.

The limited geography of finds made of paleontologists to doubt that the wings and feathers could develop in older groups of dinosaurs. But Darla Zelenitsky from the University of calgary (Canada) and her colleagues decided to take a chance and look up to three specimens of the species Ornithomimus edmontonicus, held in the Royal Torrelavega paleontology Museum near Drumheller (Canada). Two instances, prisoners in blocks grained Sandstone, were found by a local resident in 2008 and 2009, and the third is in the collections of the Museum since 1990 agricultural

O. edmontonicus - representative of the family of ornithomimosaurs that resembled ostriches, but, as it was believed, had no feathers. Slowly removing the case of Sandstone, researchers, however, found hundreds of filamentous prints along the body and limbs, which resembled a "fluff" Chinese maniraptoran.

One of two adults skeletons had a front limb with long feathers, which formed cryopedology the surface, and the third sample (scientists give the baby a year old) such feature could not boast, although they had a lot of feathers along the body.

For the first time ornithomimosaurs found feathers and wings. As this group of older maniraptoran, you can say that feathers and wings came from dinosaurs at an earlier stage of evolution.

Because ornithomimosaurs were quite large animals (weighing 150 kg and more), they are unlikely to become the wings to fly or to plan. Besides feathers appeared, apparently, already at a Mature age, and it hints that it somehow been associated with reproductive behaviour.