Photo of one of the wings, found in amber
Lida Xing et al. / Nature Communications, 2016
Chinese paleontologists discovered in Myanmar amber with remains of two wings of birds. This is the first such discovery relating to the age of dinosaurs, its age is estimated at 99 years millliona. Wings retained traces of the original paint, and also allow a better understanding of how the ancient feathers were attached to the base of the wing. The study is published in the Nature Communications , briefly about it informs editorial material Nature .
The samples of amber, found by scientists to contain not only the feathers, and bone fragments and skin of birds wings. As the authors note, this is the first such remains, which can be associated with skeletal fragments of feathers. In addition, the amber visible marks apparently left by the claws of the animal, when you try to get out of the viscous resin. The volume of samples of a few cubic centimeters.
The remains allow to clearly distinguish the color of feathers – they are dark brown with pale spots. In addition, feathers expressed asymmetrical. The bones of the skeleton found in the sample, have a small size, less than that of a hummingbird and not fully developed – most likely they belong to the young, or young birds. Some of them do not reach five millimeters in length.
The authors suggest that the remains belong to a subclass of bird enantsiornisovyh. It is believed that they existed from 130 to 66 million years ago and became extinct along with the dinosaurs. Their remains were found in the past, but only in the form of fossils, lost their three-dimensional structure. Unlike modern birds, the representatives of this subclass had teeth, and their wings ended in claws.
Earlier, Chinese researchers fossils of large multicellular organism have been found, the age of about 1.56 billion years old. We also reported the discovery of the oldest fossils of the nervous system – the age of the finds around 520-515 million years
Vladimir Korolev
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