Feathered Dinosaur Tail Found In Amber Is The First Of Its Kind Discovered

The chunk of amber seen in the first photo here is something very unique and unusual. It holds a segment of a feathered tail from a Cretaceous-era dinosaur along with an ant and various plant segments and other debris. The tail is the big draw though as it is the very first of its sort ever discovered.

In the past segments of dinosaur feathers have been discovered in amber, as well as fossilized impressions of dinosaur feathers, but this is the first time that the feathers have been so well preserved and still attached to the segment of the dinosaur tail. The amber the specimen was discovered in is semi-translucent mid-cretaceous sample that is about the size of a dried apricot. The team that discovered the sample says that it captured one of the earliest moments of differentiation between the features of birds that fly with the feathers of dinosaurs.

The tail segment is 1.4-inches long and the feathers are chestnut brown with a pale or white underside. CT scans of the segment and microscopic analysis suggests that the tail would have been made up of more than 25 vertebrae on the living dinosaur, but the sample now has only eight vertebrae from the middle or end of what was a long thin tail.

The team believes that the tail segment was part of a coelurosaur, which is part of the group theropod dinosaurs that included the T-Rex and modern birds. Since the tail was articulated, the team has ruled out the possibility of the tail segment belonging to a prehistoric bird. The dino the tail is from is believed to be incapable of flight, the feathers likely played a role in temperature regulation.

The team discovered this rare sample in a rather unusual place. It was purchased by the team at a well known amber market in Myitkyina and had already been shaped before the scientists procured the sample. It was originally taken from a mine in the Hukawng Valley in Kachin state in northern Myanmar.

SOURCE: National Geographic