New Feathered Dinosaur Sparks Intrigue, Outrage

By Mike Howie

The fossil of a turkey-sized dinosaur is making waves in the paleontology world. For one, it’s the first feathered dinosaur discovered in the Southern Hemisphere. And two, scientists are now debating whether it should have ever left Brazil.

A Unique Discovery

Named Ubirajara jubatus, the dinosaur sported a fur-like mane down its back and four unique feathers extending from its shoulders. It was small — about four and a half feet long and 14 inches tall — and lived in what is now Brazil during the Cretaceous period 120 million years ago.

Those four shoulder feathers are what really made Ubirajara stand out, both now and in the ancient past. Scientists believe that the dinosaur likely used them as a type of display to attract mates or ward off rivals, much like modern birds. They even give the dinosaur its name — Ubirajara means “lord of the spear” in Brazil’s indigenous Tupi language.

“These structures are really elaborate; they made this animal look pretty spectacular, just as a bird of paradise looks spectacular,” said David Martill, a paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth in England and a co-author of the study. “When birds have these sorts of feathers, they do all sorts of posh dances and displays, so this dinosaur looks like it was a little show-off.”

In the Cretaceous period, Brazil was part of Gondwana, a supercontinent that included modern-day South America, Africa, Antarctica, Arabia, Madagascar, and India. Scientists have long hypothesized that dinosaurs from Gondwana had feathers, and Ubirajara provides some evidence for the idea. It also suggests an ancient history of carnivorous dinosaurs using feathers for complex displays.

“Up until now, we’ve been missing half of the world, in terms of the evolution of feathers,” said Robert Smyth, who led the study as a master’s student at the University of Portsmouth under Martill’s supervision. “It’s just been a blank space, really.”

The study was published in the journal Cretaceous Research on December 13, 2020.

Contested Ownership

After the study was published, Brazilian scientists began calling for the fossil to be returned to Brazil and some questioned whether it was exported legally. A Brazilian law enacted in 1942 asserts that fossils found in the country belong to the state and forbids commercial sale. While regulations passed by Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology allow fossils and other scientific samples to legally leave the country for research purposes, they require foreign scientists to first acquire approval from Brazil’s National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

When the Ubirajara fossil was unearthed in the early 1990s, it was delivered to a paleontological museum in the Brazilian city of Crato. It was here that Martill and study co-author Eberhard Frey, a geoscientist at the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe in Germany, first saw the fossil. In 1995, they had it exported to Germany, where it remains today. While the team did acquire permission from Brazil’s National Department of Mineral Production to export the fossil, they did not receive permission from the CNPq.

“The fossils found here are part of the Brazilian paleontological heritage,” said Max Langer, a paleontologist at the University of São Paulo who was not involved in the study. “So it is not good that this material is out of the country.”

Brazil’s Society of Paleontology is now working with Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development to investigate whether the export was legal, and Cretaceous Research said it would consider temporarily removing the study pending the results of the investigation.

“I am sure we [will] find a solution,” said Frey in an email to National Geographic.