Dr Valentina Rossi

@she-paleo.bsky.social

⛏Palaeontologist |🔬Fossil Pigments | 🎙️TEDxBolca‘22 speaker |🤸🏻‍♀️Gymnast | 📍Cork #scicomm Instragram @she_paleo

Here it is! Please welcome the AMAZING Mirasaura grauvogeli, a NEW MARVELOUS Drepanosaur published in NATURE today! This astonishing reptile lived during the Middle Triassic in Europe and it possessed an amazing crest made of plume-like structures! I was commissioned to bring it to life #paleoart

Illustration showing a pair of Mirasaura perched on fern fronds. The green animals show their tall orange, brown and white crests while a small beetle flies over one of them

Proud to make my National Geographic debut with this incredible discovery! Meet Mirasaura, an extremely weird little guy with independently-evolved "feathers" that solves a longstanding Triassic mystery and makes one of the period's oddest families even stranger. (Now with a fixed link!)

Is it a bird? A monkey? No, it's a 'miraculous' new prehistoric reptile

Mirasaura grauvogeli had a featherlike crest and a tail like a monkey. “It's been a long time since I've been so blown away by a new fossil discovery.”

nationalgeographic.com