Sunday 3 July 2016

99-million-year-old dinosaur bird wings found preserved in amber

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Scientists just published their findings on the discovery of two 99 million-year-old baby dinosaur wings with feathers still attached was found encased in amber.

I'm going to repeat that: We've got two dinosaur wings so well-preserved in amber that scientists can study their feathers.

No, you aren't living in the first 10 minutes of an unpublished Jurassic Park sequel.

The wings seem to come from enantiornithes, a group of transitional dinosaurs with teeth and claws on their wings but that otherwise resembled modern birds. The wings got trapped in tree sap, which – as it turned to amber – encased them and preserved them more effectively than the more common fossilisation process would have.

One more amazing fact from the paper: It looks like the ancient dino-bird baby might have still been alive when it got buried in the tree sap. Preserved claw marks around the wings suggest some kind of struggle happened before the sap hardened.
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