By Susan Milius
Bits of filaments and feathers trapped in amber 79 million years ago offer an unusually wide-ranging view of what late dinosaurs and early birds were wearing.
The 11 small, amber-bound specimens found in Canada span an evolutionary range of late Cretaceous fashion, from what appear to be unbranched filaments — which have been proposed as the first stage of dinosaur feather evolution — to bits of sophisticated, corkscrewy barbs like the wettable feathers on modern diving birds, a team from the University of Alberta reports in the Sept. 16 Science.
Such a range has shown up squashed in rock fossils, but “we’re seeing the same thing preserved in beautiful 3-D forms,” says coauthor Ryan McKellar. “It’s preserved down to the point of having pigment, which opens up the doorway for all sorts of weird and wonderful investigations.”