Slashdot Mirror
First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber (nationalgeographic.com)
The tail of a beautiful, feathered dinosaur has been found perfectly preserved in amber from Myanmar. It is a huge breakthrough that could help open a new window on the biology of a group that dominated Earth for more than 160 million years. From a report on the National Geographic: The semitranslucent mid-Cretaceous amber sample, roughly the size and shape of a dried apricot, captures one of the earliest moments of differentiation between the feathers of birds of flight and the feathers of dinosaurs. Inside the lump of resin is a 1.4-inch appendage covered in delicate feathers, described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside. CT scans and microscopic analysis of the sample revealed eight vertebrae from the middle or end of a long, thin tail that may have been originally made up of more than 25 vertebrae. NPR has a story on how this amber was found. An excerpt from it reads: In 2015, Lida Xing was visiting a market in northern Myanmar when a salesman brought out a piece of amber about the size of a pink rubber eraser. Inside, he could see a couple of ancient ants and a fuzzy brown tuft that the salesman said was a plant. As soon as Xing saw it, he knew it wasn't a plant. It was the delicate, feathered tail of a tiny dinosaur.
n/t
You lost!
Just a dead parrot.
so it begins
With all the other hocus pocus medicine they have over there, I'm surprised it wasn't eaten.
Can someone tell us where this Lida crossing (Lida Xing) is?
I know amber is fossilized tree resin, but at this point is it possible to somehow dissolve the amber without destroying what's inside it?
It would be interesting if it could be done so we could see the tail and feathers in real light without the amber being in between.
Also, from the picture, there are bits and pieces of vegetation not to mention at least one ant inside the specimen which could be recovered.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Could this be the start of a real Jurassic Park?
Here is another one with tail feathers from a bird, ~100million years BC.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When does the damn park open?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Dinosaur birds are filthy animals.
...for anyone named Amber right now.
If they've never seen one before then how do they know that it's a dinosaur tail with feathers?
Isn't it also possible that this is a tail segment from some other kind of animal or even a flightless bird?
Let's just ask the Grays to give us some dino DNA samples from when they collected them years ago.
Either way, what a huge find, this is awesome! Colors, positioning, type of feathers. The feathers on this tail are more floppy like the display, not flight, feathers in modern birds, showing that sexual display likely came before flight in evolution. Colors probably were important early on some are saying.
Bird-like dinosaurs just got a whole lot more real.
NPR has a story on how this amber was found. An excerpt from it reads:
"with the strong shaft coming first"
By today's taxonomy, birds ARE dinosaurs, not descendants of dinosaurs. But that would make the story less sensational. Besides, people need to hold onto their incorrect schooling that says that all dinosaurs were just huge lizards, even though the two have little to do with each other.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
We are predisposed to think of feathers as equipment for flying. But seeing all those flying "dinosaurs" flitting about our yard is misleading.
Reptilian scales are basically fish scales that have been greatly toughened to control moisture loss, allowing colonization of the land. But if you are a non-big dinosaur, thermal regulation is a significant problem. Feathers are basically scales that can be fluffed up or laid flat, to varying degrees, giving different insulating profiles, at the cost of possibly losing some moisture, which many dinosaurs could well afford.
The feather more appropriate for flying could have been variants that were big for display and could lay very flat. But the original purpose was not flying. Flatness is possibly desirable for: reducing insulation when desired, streamlining the body if traveling quickly through brush, making big visual displays with relatively light equipment. However a small dinosaur that jumped around trees would find that large flattish feathers would give it added control over gliding descents, which is a fabulous thing if you are in a hurry.