The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
A PALAEONTOLOGIST who lived and worked in North Clare is among a team of scientists whose research, published this week, suggests that all dinosaurs had feathers. The evidence presented by Dr Maria McNamara and her colleagues changes the previously-accepted hypothesis that only one group of dinosaurs had feathers. Dr McNamara is a palaeontologist in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at University College Cork. From Clonmel, she previously lived in Moymore and was employed as a geologist in the Burren Geopark, where she worked with about 20 primary schools, the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre and the Burren Outdoor Education Centre. Dr McNamara was approached over a year ago, while working in the University of Bristol, with dinosaur fossil specimens from a site in Siberia. She has been key to discovering the first-ever example of a primitive plant-eating dinosaur with feathers and scales. Previously, only advanced flesh-eating dinosaurs were known to have had feathers, so this new find …
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