The chick was found, frozen in the amber 99 million years ago.
Paleontologists from the United States, Canada and China for the first time presented to the public chick, frozen in the amber 99 million years ago. The enclosure – the so-called fossils of a living organism, caught in amber, was presented in Beijing.
A unique example was found in Northern Myanmar in 2016; to determine its exact date scientists have spent the last several months.
According to experts, the find can be called incredibly rare, because unlike the remains found in the ground, frozen in amber chick remained a complete structure, and – more importantly – skin, tail, ear openings and eyelids. All this gives scientists a rare chance a detailed study of prehistoric birds.
Sample of amber length of nine inches fully encompassed the head, cervical spine, tail and wings of ancient feathered. As found by the experts, it belongs in the group enantiornithine birds that dominated the Cretaceous period and became extinct together with the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.
Earlier finds of remains of representatives of this group suggests that these birds were hatched with the “working” feathers necessary for flight. The same is evident in “amber fossil”: the tail feathers have just started to develop, the body plumage is still rare, but the feathers of the wings have fully formed.
Probably, these types of since the childhood was able to fly and care for themselves, scientists believe. By the way, there is an assumption that the lack of parental care has contributed to the extinction of this group of prehistoric birds.
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