A perfectly preserved tail of a feathered dinosaur dating back to millions of years ago has been found in amber, wowing scientists who believe it will be a huge help in the study of the feather's evolution.
Xing Lida from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing and Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada led a research team that studied the fossil and published their findings in the journal Current Biology on Thursday.
The tail of a feathered dinosaur in amber. / Current Biology
Xing said that he found the remarkable fossil at an amber market in Myitkina, Myanmar, in summer 2015. He tracked down the amber miner to see the place where the fossil was found.
"It is the first time that we have found a piece of amber with dinosaur material," said Xing.
He believes the amber was formed naturally because of the resin's flow pattern and the extinct ant wrapped in it.
The fossil was tested and found to date back to mid-Cretaceous period, about 99 million years ago.
The preserved tail is about 3.85 centimeters long, covered in feathers, and researchers assume that the dinosaur would have been about 18.5 centimeters tall.
The feathers in amber. /Current Biology
"We can be sure of the source because the vertebrae are not fused into a rod or pygostyle as in modern birds and their closest relatives," Xing said. "Instead, the tail is long and flexible, with keels of feathers running down each side."
The tail's feathers lack the well-developed central shaft – a rachis – that modern birds have. Instead, it has fine branching tiers, which demonstrate that the barbs and barbules of modern feathers formed before the rachis developed.
"We could possibly find other body parts of the dinosaur in other ambers, or the fossils of other ancient creatures in ambers," said Xing.
(Based on an original story by China Daily)
