Extinct creatures-- Kulindadromeus

Last time I mentioned this guy, and I figured it was about time it got a post!

Kulindadromeus was a small herbivorous Ornithischian ("bird-hipped" dinosaur-- the sister group to Saurischia, the group containing theropods and sauropods, which might not be a group anymore because of exciting paleontology news) from the late Jurassic of Russia.

Kulindadromeus is a relative of both pachycephalosaurs and ceratopsians, and is confirmed to have been covered in protofeathers. This is a very big deal, as before this, we only really had direct evidence of protofeathers in theropods, so it wasn't widely accepted that the common ancestor of all dinosaurs could have had protofeathers. But with this discovery, and with the way the phylogenetic tree of dinosaurs was laid out at the time of this discovery, that would have to be the case! It is very exciting!!!

Kulindadromeus wasn't even the first Ornithischian that had evidence of some kind of filamentous integument-- we'd already discovered ceratopsians with quills (like Psittacosaurus). So it'd already been theorized that protofeathers weren't just a theropod thing, but Kulindadromeus was the discovery that really solidified the theory!

So basically, Kulindadromeus confirmed that any dinosaur could have protofeathers or protofeather-derived structures, which makes reconstructing dinosaurs even more fun. It doesn't mean every dinosaur had protofeathers. Many are confirmed to have been naked, and not even all mammals have hair, despite it being one of our most important characteristics. But imagine future paleontologists dug up a rhino and said "ah, this mammal was not hairy and had thick armored skin. Let's apply that to every mammal, just to be safe" and then they kept finding fuzzy mammals and saying "well that one is confirmed to have hair but that doesn't mean we should go around putting hair on mammals willy-nilly!!" and this continued indefinitely and they kept making movies about rhino-looking kitty cats and saying fur made them look stupid and, um, anyway...

Kulindadromeus made it so now when we reconstruct dinosaurs, we might consider protofeathers before making them cold and naked, and it reminded us that we may think we know a lot, but we're just one new fossil away from discovering we don't know nothin.

That's all for this week! Next time I'll try to post a double paleo post to make up for missing last week. Also, if anyone wants to suggest an extinct creature, feel free!