A recent and amazing discovery in Siberia has tipped the weight of scientific opinion towards the theory that most dinosaurs-herbivores and carnivores-had feathers and plumage.

As in the feathers and plumage you see on today's chickens and birds.

Before the dig at a dinosaur graveyard in Kulinda, on the banks of the Olov River in Siberia's Transbaikal region, it was held that only flesh-eating or carnivorous dinosaurs were known to have been feathered.

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At Kulinda for the first time, plant-eating dinosaur fossils with discernible feathers and scales were discovered.

A report about the Kulinda find in Science magazine said the latest discovery indicates that most dinosaurs could have been feathered.

The discovery of several 150-million-year-old fossils indicates that a majority of dinosaurs were either covered with feathers or had the potential to grow feathers, said the report.

"It is a big discovery. It has completely changed our vision of dinosaurs," said lead researcher Dr Pascal Godefroit of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

"Our new find clinches it: all dinosaurs had feathers, or at least the potential to sprout feathers."

Dr. Godefroit and other Belgian scientists who worked alongside Russian scientists at Kulinda.

The find at Kulinda is from a separate group of herbivores called ornithischians, which comprised about half of all dinosaurs.

What scientists uncovered in Siberia were fossils of a plant-eating creature called "Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus." This was a small around ornithischians only one meter long.

Looking a lot like a grotesque large chicken, it had a short snout, long hind legs, short arms and a fluffy feathered body.

The fossil remains of Fossil remains of Kulindadromeus show reptile-like scales on its tail and shins, and short bristles on its head and back.

The report said the most astonishing discovery, however, is that it also had complex, compound feathers associated with its arms and legs.

Dr. Godefroit said the fact that feathers have now been discovered in two distinct groups, theropods in China and ornithischians in Russia, means that the common ancestor of these species which might have existed 220 million years ago also probably had feathers.

Scientists now believe dinosaurs were all initially feathered and warm blooded. This confirms an idea that has prevailed for years. Feathers on dinosaurs were first used for insulation and signaling. Feathers only became adapted for flight later on.

"Instead of thinking of dinosaurs as dry, scary scaly creatures, a lot of them actually had a fluffy, downy covering like feathers on a chick," said co-researcher Dr Maria McNamara of Cork University in Ireland.

"Our research doesn't mean that all dinosaurs had feathers, especially as adults," said Professor Mike Benton, of Bristol University, who was also a member of the research team.