原始羽毛概念的提出及其在羽毛演化研究中的科学意义

A Proposal of the Concept of Protofeathers and Its Significant Scientific Value in the Study on Feathers Evolution

从宏观和微观两方面论证了中华龙鸟的皮肤衍生物不是什么“毛发”，而是一种以前人们没能认识的原始羽毛。详细介绍了原始羽毛的基本概念，阐述了原始羽毛与现代羽毛在形态结构方面的相似性和差异性，探讨了原始羽毛在羽毛演化研究中的科学意义。

The concept of protofeathers was first proposed by Ji Qiang and Ji Shuan in 1996, and the term“protofeathers” was assigned to some special hairlike structures of dermal derivatives from Sinosauropteryx, Protarchaeopteryx and other protobirds. According to our current study, 4 types of protofeathers can be recognized:natal downtype, plumuletype, semiplumetype and plumatype. All types of protofeathers are characterized mainly by the absence of barbules and rachis(or the occurrence of weakly developed rachis).It is possible that modern feathers have involved from protofeathers by the development of barbules and rachis. In this paper is given a model of feathers evolution, in which plumules gave rise to semiplumes by the development of barbules without barbicels and weakly developed rachis, and then semiplumes gave rise to contour feathers by the development of strongly developed rachis and barbules with barbicels and flange, finally contour feathers evolved further into some special types, such as hairlike feathers, bristles(or bristlelike feathers), tail feathers and flight feathers.