Baby dinosaur tail found preserved in amber, complete with feathers
by Ryan Whitwam
It took years for paleontologists to come to terms with the fact that dinosaurs had feathers. We started with “dinosaurs were like big scaly lizards,” progressed to “dinosaurs probably had feathers,” and now we’re arrived at “here are some actual dinosaur feathers.” A piece of amber discovered at a market in Myanmar has been confirmed to contain a baby dinosaur tail, which is covered with dense feathers.
Amber is fossilized tree sap, which can preserve biological material and even entire small animals that became trapped in it in the distant past. You might be most familiar with amber from its role in Jurassic Park. That’s where they get the blood-filled mosquitoes containing dinosaur DNA. This particular piece of real amber was discovered by Lida Xing, a paleontologist from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing. He didn’t have to go digging in the ground for it, though. He just bought it from a merchant.
During a 2015 trip to Myanmar, a salesman brought out the amber to show Xing. There are several ancient ants trapped inside, as well as some unidentified debris. The merchant claimed the large, wispy tube was a plant, but Xing instantly knew that wasn’t right. After closer examination of the amber, a report has been published in the journal Current Biology confirming the amber contains the tail of a baby dinosaur complete with feathers.
Researchers now believe the tail belonged to a young coelurosaur, which would have been about the size of a sparrow when it became stuck in the sap 99 million years ago. Had it survived, it would have grown to nearly the size of an ostrich (see below). Studying the feathers on this section of tail provide a unique opportunity to learn about the evolutionary history of feathers and flight.
Modern bird feathers have a rigid central shaft and branching fibers that extend along the length. The branches get smaller and smaller as they go out, acting like tiny hooks that give the feather a continuous surface that aids in flight. These “hooks” are known as barbules, but it was not previously clear if the barbules or strong central shaft came first evolutionarily. The young coelurosaur seems to indicate it was the barbules first, which means the first feathers would have been light, fluffy things with little structure.
If you’ve ever seen a bird with iridescent feathers (such as a peacock), it’s the barbules scattering light that causes the color-shifting effect. The feathers found in this piece of amber seem to indicate that dinosaur feathers would have had barbules, so they might have looked much more fabulous than we thought. With the political situation stabilizing in Myanmar, paleontologists hope to find more incredible samples like this in the future.
Originally published at www.extremetech.com on December 9, 2016.
