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Life

Beautifully preserved feathers belonged to tiny flying dinosaurs

By Colin Barras

28 June 2016

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The feathers appear well-developed

Lida Xing China University of Geosciences, Beijin/ Ryan McKellar Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Regina, Canada

Around 99 million years ago, these tiny dinosaurs had a sticky encounter. Today, their feathered wings look almost exactly as they did when they became stuck in resin.

Lida Xing at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, who has led an analysis of the two similar partial amber fossils, says these dinosaurs may only have been 3.5 centimetres in length. Their size suggests they were probably juveniles.

The wings are so well preserved it’s possible to tell they were from Enantiornithes – a cousin group to today’s birds. Although this group has a different shoulder structure from birds, their flight feathers are nearly identical, suggesting they flew in the same way birds do today.

Taking off

As fossils like these come to light, we are beginning to understand the origin of flight as a gradual process, with gliding giving rise to crude powered flight, followed by skilled powered flight. These new fossils may help us determine when skilled flight began.

“It really looks like the common ancestor shared between modern birds and the Enantiornithes is exactly where many of the features that we see in modern bird flight evolved,” says Richard Prum at Yale University.

A round, smooth lump of amber in which a fossilised wing can be seen

Is it a bird? No, it’s a dinosaur

Lida Xing China University of Geosciences, Beijin/ Ryan McKellar Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Regina, Canada

A close-up showing the detail in the fossilised feathers

The fossils preserve a lot of detail

Lida Xing China University of Geosciences, Beijin/ Ryan McKellar Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Regina, Canada

Seeing as the fossils seem to be from juveniles, it appears they hatched with well-developed feathers, not the downy covering seen on the chicks of most modern birds, says Ryan McKellar at the Royal Sakatchewan Museum, Regina, Canada, who helped analyse the fossils. “The Enantiornithines appear to have come out ready to take on the world, with a full coat of flight feathers and claws,” says McKellar.

Journal reference: Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12089

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