A 247-million-year-old fossil reptile boasted an enormous crest on its back made from feather-like appendages, long before the appearance of feathered dinosaurs
By James Woodford
23 July 2025
Illustration of the Triassic reptile Mirasaura grauvogeli
Rick Stikkelorum
A reptile from the Middle Triassic had a spectacular crest made from feather-like structures, around 100 million years before the first feathered dinosaurs.
Its remains comprise two fossils with the skeleton and crest and 80 fossils of just the crest, all found by a private collector called Louis Grauvogel between the 1930s and 1970s in the Vosges mountains of northeastern France.
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It wasn’t until 2018, when Stephan Spiekman at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Germany, and his colleagues were able to study the fossils, that they realised the skeletal and crest remains were from the same species, one new to science.
They have now formally described it, naming it Mirasaura grauvogeli – partly derived from the Latin for marvellous lizard on account of its extravagant crest.
It was very surprising to find such a complex skin outgrowth in an animal dating back 247 million years, early in the evolution of reptiles, says Spiekman.