An exceptionally well-preserved dinosaur tail was discovered offering exciting insights into what they really looked like.
In 2016, a specimen dating back to over 99 millions years ago was uncovered by a team of scientists.
The amber was found to contain a dinosaur tail offering an exciting insight into the evolution of the prehistoric animals.
The discovery
Current Biology reports the piece of amber was found in Kachin State, Myanmar and features an exciting feature visible to the naked eye – a tail with ‘a dense covering of feathers’.
Other soft tissues are also preserved within the specimen such as muscle, ligaments and skin.
While a previous study led by the same team notes Burmese amber deposits from this area and period are one of the ‘most prolific and well-studied sources of exceptionally preserved’ specimens from this period, this find is different.
The article continues: “[The] plumage structure directly informs the evolutionary developmental pathway of feathers.
“This specimen provides an opportunity to document pristine feathers in direct association with a putative juvenile coelurosaur, preserving fine morphological details, including the spatial arrangement of follicles and feathers on the body, and micrometer-scale features of the plumage.”
And the tail adds on to previous findings, which have revealed feathers present within preserved dinosaur remains.
A feathered tail was discovered (National Geographic)
Previous findings
The team of researchers previously found wings preserved in amber which had feathers on too.
An article published in Nature Communications revealed the Burmese amber was found at an amber market in northeastern Myanmar in Southeast Asia and is from the mid-Cretaceous period – that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago.
The study revealed: “The extremely small size and osteological development of the wings, combined with their digit proportions, strongly suggests that the remains represent precocial hatchlings of enantiornithine birds.
“These specimens demonstrate that the plumage types associated with modern birds were present within single individuals of Enantiornithes by the Cenomanian (99 million years ago), providing insights into plumage arrangement and microstructure alongside immature skeletal remains.
“This finding brings new detail to our understanding of infrequently preserved juveniles, including the first concrete examples of follicles, feather tracts and apteria in Cretaceous avialans.”
And leader of the study, Chinese paleontologist Lida Xing has opened up further about the latest ‘once in a lifetime find’.
Scientists discovered a feathered tail and feathers on the wings (National Geographic)
What it means
Xing told CNN: “I realized that the content was a vertebrate, probably theropod, rather than any plant.
“I was not sure that (the trader) really understood how important this specimen was, but he did not raise the price.”
Co-author of the paper and paleontologist at the Royal Saskatchwan Museum in Canada, Ryan McKellar, said: “It’s a once in a lifetime find. The finest details are visible and in three dimensions.
“The more we see these feathered dinosaurs and how widespread the feathers are, things like a scaly velociraptor seem less and less likely and they’ve become a lot more bird like in the overall view.
“They’re not quite the Godzilla-style scaly monsters we once thought.”
