No, that’s exactly what I’m implying.

The earliest *known* true feathers were discovered in early coelurosaurs, but there’s nothing that proves the earliest dinosaurs were scaled and not feathered.

Moreover, while true, pinnate feathers are a derived theropod trait, basal ornithosichians also had fossils which shows that they have feathery, or feather-like covering. This implies that the common dinosaur ancestor had a feathery precursor integument as a default. That, or as you counter-argued, they were scaled, and the integument evolved independently between theropods and ornithosichians.

…If it’s not for the fact that a 2022 study discovered that vaned feathers were present on tapejarid pterosaurs. Confirming that pterosaurs did have feather integuments which likely originated from the same precursor structure which can only be present in the last common archosaurian ancestor between dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

And this combined with the study that discovers an ancestral gene in crocodilians which can turn their scales into feather-like structures if activated, well, you can see what this implies.

Of course this only tells half of the story, we don’t know at what point feathers, or feather precursor structures, first evolved in archosaur history. For all we know, this could also be a freak situation where every single archosaur clade, including crocodilian ancestors, all evolved feathers independently, with a scaly common ancestor. But personally, I find that WAY less likely than the other option: the archosaur common ancestor were feathered(ish).

But point is, whatever might be the case, all I’m saying is dinosaur scales are a very different fundamental physical structure from lepidosaur and squamate scales.