Jianianhualong: new feathered troodontid

[ZoPteryx]

The Jehol group just keeps on giving!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaenamontanari/2017/05/02/a-newly-discovered-dinosaur-has-tail-feathers-like-modern-birds/#460f6a686c1d

While not totally unexpected, this is the first non-avian dinosaur to preserve asymmetric tail feathers*, suggesting flight arose at least prior to the troodontid (or deinonychosaur)-avian split.

*I guess Microraptor doesn't have them?  I haven't read the paper yet:

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14972

[stargatedalek]

The foreword has a few issues and contradictions in it, I wouldn't read to much into it. It's clear the parties involved were preoccupied with documenting this specimen and made some rather broad comparative statements that don't hold up.

[Sim]

Oh wow, it's great to have another troodontid that preserves feathers in addition to Jinfengopteryx!  Thanks for sharing the paper, ZoPteryx!

It's late over here, so I can't read the paper tonight.  I read the other article though, and it's not clear to me if they are joking when they say, "This fossil was discovered in the Jehol Group from the Lower Cretaceous, a collection of fossil sites known for being lousy with dinosaurs."  Whether they are joking or not, this is an absurd, wasteful and misleading way to describe the area that has produced so many amazing dinosaur fossils, including the best preserved dinosaur fossils in the world.

[Neosodon]

I find it interesting how the first feathered dinosaurs and first birds both come from the Jurassic. Dinosaurs may have made the complete transition from scales to flying birds in only 30 million years.

[ZoPteryx]

Oh wow, it's great to have another troodontid that preserves feathers in addition to Jinfengopteryx!  Thanks for sharing the paper, ZoPteryx!

It's late over here, so I can't read the paper tonight.  I read the other article though, and it's not clear to me if they are joking when they say, "This fossil was discovered in the Jehol Group from the Lower Cretaceous, a collection of fossil sites known for being lousy with dinosaurs."  Whether they are joking or not, this is an absurd, wasteful and misleading way to describe the area that has produced so many amazing dinosaur fossils, including the best preserved dinosaur fossils in the world.

I've occasionally heard lousy used as a synonym for abundant, but like you said, that usually comes with a negative connotation.  There were certainly far better ways to structure that sentence.  We wouldn't say the Great Barrier Reef if "lousy with coral", after all. 

[Halichoeres]

I've used "lousy with" to describe something abundant, kind of like "crawling with." But I'm given to dysphemism because I think it's more entertaining than straight-ahead earnestness. For something like the Jehol, the earnest way to describe it is breathless wonderment. It probably says something unflattering about me that I find breathless wonderment tiresome.

[Dinoguy2]

The Jehol group just keeps on giving!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaenamontanari/2017/05/02/a-newly-discovered-dinosaur-has-tail-feathers-like-modern-birds/#460f6a686c1d

While not totally unexpected, this is the first non-avian dinosaur to preserve asymmetric tail feathers*, suggesting flight arose at least prior to the troodontid (or deinonychosaur)-avian split.

*I guess Microraptor doesn't have them?  I haven't read the paper yet:

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14972

Microraptor does have asymmetrical tail feathers. This is discussed in the paper and used to support the hypothesis that asymmetrical feathers are primitive for Paraves.

This is also the first "definitive" feathered troodontid. All the others have been found to be other things in better analyses. Even Jinfengooteryx ends up as a basal eumaniraptoran when more taxa are included. Andrea Cau seems to think even this new one may not be a troodontid either...

[Sim]

I wasn't aware Jinfengopteryx's classification as a troodontid wasn't very strong.  In this new paper it says that Jinfengopteryx as well as a few others that preserve feathers have been considered to be troodontids at some point at least, but that several recent phylogenetic studies suggest they might not be troodontids.  This makes the discovery of this new one even better, as paraphrasing what it says in the paper, it's the first unquestionable troodontid that preserves feathers.  Its classification as a troodontid seems to be very strongly supported.