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By Kalliopi Monoyios | September 17, 2011


Since it’s getting so ugly over at TechCrunch, I thought I should provide an antidote of real beauty. Every now and then a scientific paper is published that hits it out of the park with imagery. Yesterday, McKellar el. al did just that in Science, publishing a smorgasbord of photographs of dinosaur and early bird feathers trapped in amber in addition to a truly stellar reconstruction of Sinosauropteryx by Chuang Zhao and Lida Xing. Without further ado:



An isolated barb that is structurally similar to those figured in 8HR, but lacks pigmentation. This specimen is largely visible as a result of being stuck within a drying line in the amber. The drying line is the darkened region within the amber, representing a surface where the resin was once exposed and partially dried. Found within the same piece of amber is a juvenile mite. Photo: Ryan McKellar




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A dark-field microphotograph that illustrates the apparent brown colour produced by pigments within the feather in amber. Much of the work on Canadian amber specimens has been limited by the technology available to observe the specimens. We have good indications of pigment intensity and distribution at a very fine scale, but large-scale colour patterns are elusive. Photo: Ryan McKellar

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A large number of isolated, hair-like filaments run diagonally through this amber piece. The best match for this very simple type of plumage is commonly referred to as “protofeathers” or “dino-fuzz”, and has been reported in association with a large number of Chinese dinosaur skeletons. Here, we cannot be certain which animal once bore the plumage, but its simple structure suggests a dinosaur source. Photo: Ryan McKellar

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Sinosauropteryx, a dinosaur with plumage similar to that found in Canadian amber. Specimens with hair-like protofeathers have been studied extensively from the Early Cretaceous of China, but this is the first time that plumage directly comparable to these specimens has been recovered from amber. Illustration by Chuang Zhao and Lida Xing.

Source: McKellar, R., Chatterton, B., Wolfe, A., & Currie, P. (2011). A Diverse Assemblage of Late Cretaceous Dinosaur and Bird Feathers from Canadian Amber Science, 333 (6049), 1619-1622 DOI: 10.1126/science.1203344

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/

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