Flightless, penguin-like, still to Earth tethered,

these massive pre-avian predators

produced mammoth molts, if they were feathered;

fossilization, acting editor.

A search for fossil vanes, largely in vain

since feathers contain as much air as mass

and hollow, keratin shafts don’t remain

around to be found under magnifying glass.

So dinosaur-down was disregarded

by the earliest archeologists,

but their assumptions soon proved unguarded,

confounding the future chronologists.

Feathers appeared before flight, you might say,

though properly preened, they faded away.