Feathers in amber
Now we get to look at a dinosaur’s tail with feathers.
It’s a tiny dinosaur, the size of a sparrow.
Researchers described the remarkable specimen in a new study, identifying it as the first evidence in amber from a nonavian theropod — a meat-eating and feathered dinosaur that doesn’t belong to the lineage that led to modern birds. The remarkable preservation provides a snapshot of dinosaur biology that can’t be retrieved from the fossil record, and offers a rare glimpse of feather structures in extinct dinosaurs, which could help scientists better understand how feathers evolved across the dinosaur family tree. [Photos: Amber Trap Nabs Feathered Dinosaur Tail]
Feathers!
The findings were published online Dec. 8 in the journal Current Biology.
Original article on Live Science.
Wow. It’s 99 million years old.
The original source has an artist’s impression of the beastie approaching the resin.
Poor overlooked ant. In most any other piece of amber it would be the star of the show.
I wonder how the few holdout “birds are not dinosaurs” scientists are going to spin this one. I don’t think they’ll be able to pass this off as collagen fibres.
By the way, have you ever come across Yutyrannus? At the other end of the size spectrum, it’s the largest animal reliably known (so far) to have been feathered. There were bigger ones that were probably feathered, but none bigger (that I’m aware of) where the feathers are actually preserved.
Enjoy!
http://www.xinglida.net/Yutyrannus/Yutyrannus.htm
The ant is pretty damn spectacular, and I bet people who see the photo don’t overlook it.
Your Name’s Not Bruce?, #3; at a guess the usual suspects will claim that the amber is only a couple of thousand years old, and the reason it looks like a bird’s tail is because it’s a bird’s tail. And anyway, where’s the transitional feathers?
There’s no underestimating the ability of the wilfully stupid to not see the evidence that’s right in front of their eyes.
Acolyte at #5:
I wasn’t thinking of creationists but people like Alan Feduccia and Theagarten Lingham-Soliar. Feduccia’s position is that birds evolved from something other than dinosaurs and that feathered dinosaurs are actually flightless birds. T.L.S. thinks that all putative feathered dinosaurs are showing the remains of collagen fibres rather than feathers. I don’t think that either of them is a creationist per se.