Dino's Feathers Found!

Dino's Feathers Found!
Scientists discover ancient feathers inside of amber.

Not all dinosaurs were scaly creatures that walked the earth. Some had soft feathers on their bodies! Recently, scientists found dino feathers inside a fossil. They say it’s 99 million years old!

A team of scientists published the report on December 8. They found the feathers inside of amber. That’s what tree sap becomes when it gets very old. The ancient dino’s tail was trapped in the amber. This is the first dinosaur skeleton ever found in the hardened tree liquid.

Chinese paleontologist Lida Xing studied the fossil. He and his team tried to figure out the species. They first thought it was a bird. But the tail had individual vertebrae. Bird tails have just one solid bone. Now, they think it is a type of dino called a coelurosaur. (That’s it on the cover.)

Xing bought the fossil in Myitkyina, Myanmar. That area has tons of ancient amber! But there is also a terrible war going on there. Xing hopes the war will end soon so he can find more fossils. “Maybe we can find a complete dinosaur,” he told National Geographic.

Surely there are more dino parts where those feathers came from!


Updated December 9, 2016, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Ryan Cramer