For the first time, researchers found fossils of feathered and scaled plant-eating dinosaurs, suggesting that all dinosaurs may have had feathers or had the potential to have feathers.

Pascal Godefroit from the Royal Belgium Institute of Natural History said that he was really amazed about this new finding.

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He said that scientists like him knew that some plant-eating ornithischian dinosaurs had simple bristles and only flesh-eating dinosaurs were known to have feathers.

Researchers named this new dinosaur Kulindadromeus Zabaikalicus which came from the site that it was found called Kulinda that can be found on the Oloy River in Siberia, Russia.

They discovered complex, compound feathers associated with Kulindadromeus arms and legs, aside from epidermal scales located on its tails and shins and short bristles on its head and back.

According to Dr. Maria McNamara, from the University of Bristol, the feathers were well preserved. They can see each filament and the way they are joined together at the base, creating a compound structure of six or seven filaments, each up to 15mm long.

Professor Danielle Dhouailly compared the Kulindadromeus to a chicken. She said that developmental experiments on modern chickens suggest that avian scales are aborted feathers, an idea that explains why birds have scaly legs.

She said that the molecular mechanism needed for this switch might have been related to the appearance of the first feathers in the earliest dinosaurs.

Kulindadromeus measures one meter long, had long hind legs and short arms with five fingernails. This small plant-eater has a short snout with teeth showing clear plant eating adaptations.

With this new discovery, scientist suggests that feathered-like dinosaurs were widely spread during the Jurassic Period.

They said that during the Triassic Period, dinosaurs used their feathers for insulation, signaling and later on for flying.

They added that smaller dinosaurs were probably covered with colorful feathers, but these feathers were lost when dinosaurs grew larger.