Abstract:Chinese scholars are paying unprecedented attentions on feathery dunes in recent years in their studies on the Kumtagh Desert, but with widely divergent views on feathery dunes. This paper reviews dune classifications proposed by several authors. It is shown that a feathery dune is a variation of a compound linear ridge, in which the main ridge acts as a "shaft" and subsidiary dunes diverging from the main ridge act as "feathers". Comparing the morphology of the feather dunes reported in other deserts around the world and that in the Kumtagh Desert of China, one may see that the so-called feather dunes in the Kumtagh Desert are in fact not real feather dunes, but typical seif dunes. The "feathers" erroneously assumed on remote sensing images are patterns reflecting albedo contrast of the ground surface sediments. They are not related to the relief on the inter-seif dune corridors. Feather dunes are developed in the complex wind regime under the condition of insufficient sand supply. That misconception of feather dunes held by some Chinese scholars should be corrected.