Fluffy and Proud of it

A speculative take on Euparkeria capensis, a small middle Triassic archosauromorph from South Africa. While usually depicted as scaly and crocodile-like, there is increasing evidence that the earliest members of the archosaur lineage were already quite birdlike, at least in their physiology. Crocs might actually be the odd ones! Accordingly, I depicted Euparkeria with speculative fluffy covering of protofeathers or something analogous.

This was inspired by a new paper (Cubo & Jalil 2019: Bone histology of Azendohsaurus laaroussii: Implications for the evolution of thermometabolism in Archosauromorpha. Paleobiology Vol. 45, pp. 317-330). The authors compare bone histologies of Mesozoic archosauromorphs with living animals and conclude that their metabolic levels were within the range of variation of mammals and birds, far beyond those of living ectothermic or "cold-blooded" crocodylians or lizards. If these animals truly were endothermic, they probably needed insulation. In the absence of direct evidence, it makes sense to reconstruct at least the smaller taxa with some sort of pelage.