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Rare Dinosaur-Era Bird Wings Found Trapped in Amber
Bone, tissue, and feathers show the almost 100-million-year-old wings are remarkably similar to those on modern birds.
NEWS.NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM
99-Million-Year-Old Bird Wings Found Encased in Amber - Smithsonian
Finding things trapped in amber is far from a rare occurrence: lizards, bugs, flowers and more are regularly found encased in hardened lumps of the tree resin. But when a group of researchers digging through amber mined in Burma uncovered a sample with a pair of tiny bird-like wings frozen inside, they knew they had something special. At around 99 million years old, these wings are some of the most pristine fossilized feathers ever found.
"It gives us all the details we could hope for," Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate paleontology at Canada’s Royal Saskatchewan Museum tells Sarah Kaplan for the Washington Post. "It's the next best thing to having the animal in your hand."
While birds and dinosaurs are related, the giant lizards didn’t directly evolve into modern birds. The first ancient birds began appearing during the Late Jurassic Period about 150 million years ago and then spent millions of years flapping in the shadows of their larger cousins. While scientists have uncovered many ancient bird fossils over the years, they are rarely very clear because their feathers and hollow bones don’t hold up nearly as well to the fossilization process as mammals, lizards, and the like, Kristin Romey reports for National Geographic. For the most part, researchers have had to make do with faint imprints of wings left behind in rock and amber.
"The biggest problem we face with feathers in amber is that we usually get small fragments or isolated feathers, and we’re never quite sure who produced [them]," McKellar tells Romey. "We don’t get something like this. It’s mind-blowingly cool."
"It gives us all the details we could hope for," Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate paleontology at Canada’s Royal Saskatchewan Museum tells Sarah Kaplan for the Washington Post. "It's the next best thing to having the animal in your hand."
While birds and dinosaurs are related, the giant lizards didn’t directly evolve into modern birds. The first ancient birds began appearing during the Late Jurassic Period about 150 million years ago and then spent millions of years flapping in the shadows of their larger cousins. While scientists have uncovered many ancient bird fossils over the years, they are rarely very clear because their feathers and hollow bones don’t hold up nearly as well to the fossilization process as mammals, lizards, and the like, Kristin Romey reports for National Geographic. For the most part, researchers have had to make do with faint imprints of wings left behind in rock and amber.
"The biggest problem we face with feathers in amber is that we usually get small fragments or isolated feathers, and we’re never quite sure who produced [them]," McKellar tells Romey. "We don’t get something like this. It’s mind-blowingly cool."
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