Dinosaurs Might Been Having Feathers All The Time, Newly Discovered Amber Tells Us
A group of Canadian paleontologists has decided to dig through a museum's amber collections instead of digging through rubble and rocks to find fossils. The radical method paid off when they found feathers and structures that were never before seen, which the group thinks are something called dinofuzz.
Dinfuzz are sort of fluffy structures trapped inside bits of ancient amber that may signify some of the most early evolutionary trials leading to feathers. These filaments of "dinofuzz" are very well conserved that they provide hints of color, according to a post at Science Mag. On top of that, some of the items embedded within the amber do not resemble anything found on any living creature today.
How the feathers were found
The scientists painstakingly went through thousands of little amber nuggets dated 80 million years ago. Among them, they have found 11 little globes the size of Skittles with traces of ancient fuzz and feathers. Several of them resembled feathers seen today, some for flying and some for swimming. Unlike fossils, the amber has also preserved colors, they were observed to be brown, red, white, and gray.
Everything seemed like a normal archaeological dig when a few hair-like structures that are hollow puzzled the researchers. The filaments weren't fur, plant fibers, or fungus, so they deduce that they are protofeathers.
The results, published in Science three years ago, would give researchers a more clear image of which pre-historic animals had feathers and its various use for survival. This unusual finding suggests that a wide range of feathered creatures populated the time period, everything from what seems to be modern feathers to filament-like forms. As of this writing, it is unlikely that amber would have preserved enough DNA to check if there are entire genomes. More information on the video below:
