Yanhong Pan

Jun 11, 2024 | nature.com | Tao Zhao |Yanhong Pan

arising from: T. S. Slater et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02177-8 (2023)Slater et al.1 analysed the chemical composition of untreated and experimentally degraded feathers from extant birds and fossils. The authors concluded that the dominant β-sheet structure of corneous β-proteins progressively undergoes alteration to α-helices with increasing temperature and suggested that (α-)keratins and α-helices in fossil feathers are probably artefacts of fossilization.