In the last 20 years, incredible fossils have been coming out of north-eastern China. These fossils show us that meat-eating dinosaurs, the ancestors of today’s birds, had bizarre, often spectacular feathered plumage. This talk looks at how the evolution of those feathers led to birds as we know them today. On the way we meet fuzzy tyrannosaurs, learn about the first days of feathered flight, observe the adoption of feathers for sexual display, and finally learn about how fossil feathers can be used to figure out the colors of early birds.
 
Jonah Choiniere is the Senior Researcher in Dinosaur Palaeontology at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of Wits University. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He studies the evolution of dinosaurs, and frequently digs up new fossils in the Free State and Eastern Cape. In addition to research, he teaches comparative anatomy and palaeontology in the School of Animal, Plant, and Environmental Sciences.