In this small piece of amber, dating back to the mid-Cretaceous Period approximately 99-million-years ago, paleontologist 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. Could scientists somehow extract DNA from this feature and revive the coelurosaur, similar to Jurassic Park? That remains to be seen, but using our current technology, that task still remains in the realm of science fiction.
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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 Ryan McKellar, co-author of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada.
