Ancient Amber Preserved Bird Fossil

99-million-year-old bird wings found perfectly preserved in amber.

20:26 29 June 2016

The wings of baby birds, which lived alongside the dinosaurs, where found perfectly preserved in amber in Myanmar. The birds were trapped in the sticky sap of a tropical forest 99 million years ago.

 

Exquisite details, such as the wings’ sharp little claws, were preserved, including traces of colour in spots and stripes. The tiny fossils will be used to better understand the birds’ evolution from their dinosaur ancestors.

 

Co-author Prof Mike Benton, from the University of Bristol, described the specimen in the journal Nature Communications. He said: "The individual feathers show every filament and whisker, whether they are flight feathers or down feathers, and there are even traces of colour - spots and stripes."

 

Meanwhile, Dr Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate palaeontologist at Edinburgh University, said: "They're fantastic - who would have ever thought that 99-million-year-old wings could be trapped in amber?

"These are showcase specimens and some of the most surprising fossils I've seen in a long time. We've known for a few decades that many dinosaurs had feathers, but most of our fossils are impressions of feathers on crushed limestone slabs.

 

"Three dimensional preservation in amber provides a whole new perspective and these fossils make it clear that very primitive birds living alongside the dinosaurs had wings and feather arrangements very similar to today's birds."