text: While browsing amber markets in Myanmar, scientists discovered the feathers and partial tail of a tiny baby dinosaur that lived some 99 million years ago. 
   
   The find, described in the journal Current Biology, offers a rare window onto the structure and organization of dinosaur feathers — one that could help shed new light on their evolution. 
   
   Scientists have long studied feathers that pop up in the fossil record in part because they want to understand the origins of birds. Birds are thought to be the only living descendants of dinosaurs — and questions of how and when their ancestors first developed flight (and the feathers that enabled it) remain confounding mysteries. 
   
   In recent years, paleontologists have also realized that many dinosaurs were not scaly (a la Jurassic Park) but feathered like birds. However, their plumage’s original purpose (for example, for insulation or for camouflage) remains up for debate. Researchers want to understand the origin of feathers, as well as figure out how they eventually evolved for flight. 
   
   But there are limits to what they can learn from studying feathers in isolation, without seeing how they were positioned and organized on the body — and without knowing which species the feathers came from. And those preserved plumes found with fossil skeletons are typically compressed flat in the rock, which makes it difficult to know what the animal looked like in three dimensions. 
   
   Scientists have discovered the partial tail and feathers of a 99-million-year-old baby dinosaur covered in feathers. (R.C McKellar / Royal Saskatchewan Museum) 
   
   This new fossil, encased in amber, solves all of those issues. Co-lead author Lida Xing of the China University of Geosciences discovered the fossil at an amber market in Myanmar last year. Because of its bushy appearance, the seller believed the tail to be some kind of trapped plant — but Xing believed differently and asked the Dexu Institute of Paleontology to purchase it. 
   
   “It wasn’t until Lida took a close look at it that he realized there were feathers coming off the side of the little filaments running through the amber,” said co-lead author Ryan McKellar, a paleontologist with the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada. “That’s when the real fun began, from a research standpoint.” 
   
   Amber is a paleontologist’s best friend for many reasons: Among them, it insulates the fossil from chemical alteration by the environment and helps to preserve it in three dimensions. 
   
   “Amber is like nature’s plastic,” McKellar said. “It seals in a lot of information at the same time it’s basically drying out a lot of inclusions that end up in the resin.” 
   
   Cheung Chung-tat and Liu Yi A reconstruction of the sparrow-sized coelurosaur. A reconstruction of the sparrow-sized coelurosaur. (Cheung Chung-tat and Liu Yi) 
   
   Xing, McKellar and colleagues CT-scanned the tail through the amber, studying its microscopic structure. 
   
   The partial tail, which probably belonged to a coelurosaur about the size of a sparrow, consists of eight full vertebra surrounded by highly preserved feathers. In birds, tailbones are fused together in what’s known as a pygostyle, which is why scientists think this one must have come from a non-avialan dinosaur. 
   
   “This flexible tail isn’t something that you see in modern birds, so it restricts you to a group of dinosaurs that are outside of archaeopteryx and modern birds,” McKellar said. “You have to be dealing with something lower down in the evolutionary tree. And this means you’re firmly in dinosaur territory, as opposed to bird territory.” 
   
   Unlike birds, the dinosaur’s feathers had an underdeveloped main stem, or rachis. The top feathers were dark and those on the underside were light, so it may have been used for camouflage or signaling, McKellar said. 
   
   There are limits to what this particular fossil can reveal about feathered dinosaurs, the scientist added – but it does show that more such fossils might well exist, mistaken for bushy plants or other debris, just waiting to be found. His colleagues, he added, were continuing to search amber markets, hoping to get lucky once again. 
   
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   On average, people born in the U.S. in 2015 will live 36.5 days less than those born in 2014 ||||| The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology. 
   
   While individual dinosaur-era feathers have been found in amber, and evidence for feathered dinosaurs is captured in fossil impressions, this is the first time that scientists are able to clearly associate well-preserved feathers with a dinosaur, and in turn gain a better understanding of the evolution and structure of dinosaur feathers. 
   
   View Images A segment from the feathered tail of a dinosaur that lived 99 million years ago is preserved in amber. A Cretaceous-era ant and plant debris were also trapped in the resin. Photograph by R.C. McKellar, Royal Saskatchewan Museum 
   
   The research, led by paleontologist Lida Xing of the China University of Geosciences, was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council. 
   
   A Telling Tail 
   
   The semitranslucent mid-Cretaceous amber sample, roughly the size and shape of a dried apricot, captures one of the earliest moments of differentiation between the feathers of birds of flight and the feathers of dinosaurs. (Learn more about the evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds.) 
   
   Inside the lump of resin is a 1.4-inch appendage covered in delicate feathers, described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside. 
   
   View Images A micro-CT scan reveals the delicate feathers that cover the dinosaur tail. Photograph by Lida Xing 
   
   CT scans and microscopic analysis of the sample revealed eight vertebrae from the middle or end of a long, thin tail that may have been originally made up of more than 25 vertebrae. 
   
   View Images A scan of the underside of the tail shows the feather arrangement. Photograph by Lida Xing 
   
   Based on the structure of the tail, researchers believe it belongs to a juvenile coelurosaur, part of a group of theropod dinosaurs that includes everything from tyrannosaurs to modern birds. 
   
   Feathered, but Could It Fly? 
   
   The presence of articulated tail vertebrae in the sample enabled researchers to rule out the possibility that the feathers belonged to a prehistoric bird. Modern birds and their closest Cretaceous ancestors feature a set of fused tail vertebrae called a pygostyle that enables tail feathers to move as a single unit. 
   
   "[A pygostyle] is the sort of thing you've seen if you've ever prepared a turkey," says study co-author Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate paleontology at Canada's Royal Saskatchewan Museum. 
   
   View Images The dinosaur feather structure is open, flexible, and similar to modern ornamental feathers. Photograph by Royal Saskatchewan Museum 
   
   The dinosaur feathers feature a poorly defined central shaft (rachis) and appear to keel to either side of the tail. The open, flexible structure of the feathers is more similar to modern ornamental feathers than to flight feathers, which have well-defined central shafts, branches, sub-branches, and hooks that latch the structure together. 
   
   In a report in June of this year by the same research team, Cretaceous-era bird wings preserved in amber revealed feathers remarkably similar to the flight feathers of modern birds. 
   
   The current study concludes that if the entire length of the dinosaur tail was covered in the type of feathers seen in the sample, the dinosaur "would likely have been incapable of flight." Rather, such feathers may have served a signaling function or played a role in temperature regulation, says McKellar. (Could dinosaurs fly?) 
   
   Pull Quote Maybe we can find a complete dinosaur. Lida Xing, paleontologist 
   
   The weakly developed tail feathers also suggest that the owner of the Cretaceous tail falls somewhere lower down on the evolutionary tree of theropod dinosaurs, "perhaps a basal [primitive] maniraptoran," Xing suggests, referring to the subgroup of coelurosaurs that includes oviraptorosaurs and therizinosaurs. (See the oviraptorosaur that paleontologists have dubbed the "chicken from hell.") 
   
   Destined for Jewelry, but With a Silver Lining 
   
   The amber sample—formally called DIP-V-15103 and nicknamed "Eva" in honor of paleobotanist Eva Koppelhus, the wife of co-author Philip Currie—comes from a mine in the Hukawng Valley in Kachin state, northern Myanmar. Amber from this region most likely contains the world's largest variety of animal and plant life from the Cretaceous period. 
   
   It was one of more than a dozen amber samples with significant inclusions that were collected by Xing and his research team in 2015 at a well-known amber market in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state. Two of the other samples contained the dinosaur-era bird wings published earlier this summer. 
   
   The majority of Burmese amber is used in jewelry and carvings, and the "Eva" sample had already been subject to shaping by the time it was collected by the researchers. 
   
   View Images The amber sample, from a mine in Myanmar, had already been partially shaped into an oval by a jewelry maker. Photograph by R.C> McKellar, Royal Saskatchewan Museum 
   
   The modification had a silver lining, however: It offered "a nice cross section" through the tail that enabled the scientists to study the chemistry of the exposed surface, notes McKellar. 
   
   That study revealed the presence of ferrous iron, a decomposition product from the blood hemoglobin that was once present in the dinosaur's soft tissue. 
   
   "The fact that [the iron] is still present gives us a lot of hope for future analysis, to obtain other chemical information on things like pigmentation or even to identify parts of the original keratin," says McKellar. "Maybe not for this particular specimen, but for other [samples] down the road." 
   
   Meanwhile, Xing believes that the "nearing end" of a decades-old conflict between the Myanmar government and the Kachin Independence Army, which controls the Hukawng Valley, will lead to increased scientific access to the amber mines and, in, turn, to an increase in spectacular discoveries.
target: – Researchers were perusing an amber market in Myanmar when they stumbled across a truly extraordinary specimen, National Geographic reports. Trapped inside a golden piece of amber—already partially shaped to be sold as jewelry—was a fully feathered section of a dinosaur's tail. According to the Los Angeles Times, the person selling the amber thought it was some kind of plant. While scientists have found evidence of feathered dinosaurs, not to mention feathered prehistoric birds, this piece of amber is the first time feathers have been found perfectly preserved and attached to what is unmistakably a dinosaur. The find was published Thursday in Current Biology. The tail section is believed to belong to a young, sparrow-sized coelurosaur that lived 99 million years ago. Researchers know the tail belongs to a dinosaur because of its articulated vertebrae; birds have vertebrae that are fused together. And because of the way the features are structured, researchers believe they were useless for flight. It remains unclear exactly what purpose the feathers served, though researchers theorize dinosaurs may have used them for camouflage, regulating their body heat, or signaling to other animals. Now that researchers can see how feathers actually appeared on a dinosaur's body, they hope to learn how they evolved for flight in modern-day birds. They also believe that, given access to Myanmar's amber mines, they may one day find a whole preserved dinosaur.