When it was first bring out that feathers from ancient birds were able to survive fossilization , it throw off the scientific world . Previously , it was only thought that grueling tissue could live the mental process of being turned into fogy , but slowly increasing evidence was gathered that show soft tissue paper such as the plume of birds – and dinosaur – can , in fact , survive for tens of millions of years . But that is not the only way of life that soft tissue paper can survive .
A fresh paper , issue inNature Communications , describes the astounding discovery of two bird wings preserved in gold that appointment to around 99 million years old . The finding is immensely important : Previous grounds of fossil annex are normally preserve in only two dimensions due to the nature of fossil conservation . The unmated plume has been found before in amber , but these are disassociated from the soft tissue paper that they once were embedded in , but not in these new findings .
The discoveries do out of the Burmese amber deposits which , date to the mid - Cretaceous , have been found to contain an astonishing raiment of insects , plants , and animals perfectly preserve in the fossilized tree resin . Fromentire lizardsfrozen in time , theeternal priapismof a harvestman , or the evidence of theoldest ant societiesyet discovered , the deposits keep revealing more and more prominent discoveries . This latest find bring yet another .
The dodo are only partial wing , but from them the researchers are able-bodied to find out a lot about the ancient birds , and their morphology . They have been capable to see the very first examples of pilus follicle and feather arrangements from the Cretaceous , and by using ex - shaft of light micro - CT scanning , were capable to test the construction and arrangement of the finger cymbals in the fragments of wing preserve . The barbs on the feathers show that they had interlocking feather , and therefore propose that the birds had power flight , a consistent determination with other traditional fossil .
The size of the wing powerfully suggests that they belonged to juvenile animate being of a now extinct chemical group of birds have intercourse as Enantiornithes . couple on with the well - prepare feathers , however , the researchers suspect that the young wench were what is known as “ precocial ” , meaning that the immature hatch from the egg and are relatively ripe and mobile , as oppose to the blind naked chicks in nests , which are “ altricial ” .
The amazing dodo wings show that most of the feather character found in New birds were already present in those flying around the Cretaceous forests some 100 million years ago , even displaying similar pigmentation , organization on the wing , and microstructure .
Top range of a function in school text : Reconstruction of birds in real living . Chung - Thematic Apperception Test Cheung
Bottom ikon : One of the fossils . RSM/ R.C. McKellar
