Or rather, a new dinosaur ancestor dropped. It's an archosaur that has qualities of both dinosaurs and pterosaurs, specifically bony deposits lining the spine. These deposits would have supported armor.
It's an archosaur, which left two groups of descendants...crocodilians and birds...surviving today. The bony deposits are rare in dinosaurs and unknown in birds, where they would be too heavy, but were seen in stegosaurus and a few others.
But it had something else too.
Feathers.
Feathers. The characteristic was lost and then showed back up in the avemetatarsalian group, which is a fancy way of saying dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and birds. Crocodiles, of course, do not have feathers.
This is showing that traits can be "hidden" for generations and then reactivated when an organism needs them, which I've long suspected.
What could be hiding in our DNA? Plot bunny right there...
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