Maybe it died from a disease that made its feathers fall out; or maybe it died after moulting. Hard to draw firm conclusions based on a single data point.
The scientists said this was an exciting discovery because these partial footprints belonged to an aqauatic dinosaur, that was a vegetarian, and a precursor to birds.
I said "Whoa! That's a lot of conjecture! It's hard to draw such firm conclusions from a single data point."
'Course the Evos shouted me down and called me a fool.
There are no problems in science, only opportunities.
I think this is fascinating. If this isn't some aberration, it means that there were closely related species, some with feathers, some without.
One possibility is that feathers evolved more than once. I think this is highly likely. This means it should be possible to find different genes for feathers from widely divergent modern bird species. Unless of course, the line went extinct.