In this small piece of amber, dating back to the mid-Cretaceous Period approximately 99-million-years ago, paleotologist Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences discovered a perfectly preserved dinosaur tail feather from a juvenile coelurosaur. This theropod dinosaur – belonging to the same family as the tyrannosaurs – was about the size of a sparrow. “It’s visually stunning and the level of detail on the specimen is not something I was expecting at all. I’ve done a lot of work on amber from dinosaur bone digs in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, and there’s always the hope that maybe you’ll find a fragment of a feather. This actually has part of the animal in it in terms of the skeletal remains too. It’s a totally different ball game,” said co-author Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada. Continue reading for more fascinating images from around the web.