Dinosaur Feathers Found in Ancient Amber

Instead of digging through rocks and rubble to find fossils, a group of Canadian paleontologists decided to dig through museums’ amber collections instead. Their unique approach paid off when they discovered feathers and never-before-seen structures, which they think are something called dinofuzz. As described in Science Now,

Super cool.

ms spock said:

Super cool.

WANT!!

I didn’t think that was possible because amber from those times is usually highly degraded. The beautiful pieces of amber with which we are most familiar date from only about 44 million years ago, long after the last dinosaurs perished.

But if the amber has feathers embedded and dates before 67 million years ago then that is enormously significant.

mollwollfumble said:

I didn’t think that was possible because amber from those times is usually highly degraded. The beautiful pieces of amber with which we are most familiar date from only about 44 million years ago, long after the last dinosaurs perished.

But if the amber has feathers embedded and dates before 67 million years ago then that is enormously significant.

Quite exciting.

ms spock said:

mollwollfumble said:

I didn’t think that was possible because amber from those times is usually highly degraded. The beautiful pieces of amber with which we are most familiar date from only about 44 million years ago, long after the last dinosaurs perished.

But if the amber has feathers embedded and dates before 67 million years ago then that is enormously significant.

Quite exciting.

In fact the article says:

The researchers combed through thousands of minuscule amber nuggets from nearly 80 million years ago.

80 million years is significant. It will be interesting to see what comes of it. It could rewrite quite a few textbooks.

How do we know for sure that they’re not parts of plants?

mollwollfumble said:

How do we know for sure that they’re not parts of plants?

Ah, I see:
“The filaments apparently have no cell walls, so they’re not plant fibers or fungal threads, McKellar says. And they don’t have features that look like small scales, as mammal hair does.”

11 feather samples were found in 4000 amber specimens.

mollwollfumble said:

How do we know for sure that they’re not parts of plants?

A dissenting view from Dove & Straker questions whether perhaps 3 of the 11 “feathers” may be of plant origin.