Hot fuzz: the baby bird fossil that gives new meaning to ancient feathers

The discovery of a hundred-million-year-old specimen, beautifully preserved in amber, shows how the birds of yesteryear hatched fully prepared for takeoffWe ’re back with News from the World of Old Feathers, and Lida Xing and colleagues strike again. They describe a new amber specimen of a Cretaceous bird with parts of the head, feet and wings beautifully preserved. Why is this important? After all, we have seen feathers in amber before, we have seenwings of juvenile birds in amber and last year we even had a piece ofan actualdinosaur in amber. Haven ’t we reached peak amber? I like to think we have not*.What Xing and his team of paleontologists from China, Canada and the US describe in a new paper is a hatchling Enantiornithine bird that became trapped in sticky conifer resin about 99 million years ago, in what is now Burma. AlthoughEnantiornitheslooked superficially like modern birds – which is to say they were feathered and likely to have been good fliers – the anatomy of their shoulder girdle is different, they were toothed and the fingers in their wing had claws. The newly described specimen, nicknamed Belone, offers an unparalleled glimpse into feather development and mo lting in young Enantiornithes.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Birds Fossils Science Evolution Animals Biology Wildlife Source Type: news