In 2015, Lida Xing was visiting a market in northern Myanmar when a salesman brought out a piece of amber about the size of a pink rubber eraser. Inside, he could see a couple of ancient ants and a fuzzy brown tuft that the salesman said was a plant.
As soon as Xing saw it, he knew it wasn’t a plant. It was the delicate, feathered tail of a tiny dinosaur.
“I have studied paleontology for more than 10 years and have been interested in dinosaurs for more than 30 years. But I never expected we could find a dinosaur in amber. This may be the coolest find in my life,” says Xing, a paleontologist at China University of Geosciences in Beijing. “The feathers on the tail are so dense and regular, this is really wonderful.”
He persuaded the Dexu Institute of Palaeontology to buy the artifact.
After analyzing the delicate tail, Xing and his colleagues in China, the U.K. and Canada now have an idea of what type of dinosaur it is, and of the evolutionary clues it holds. Their research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.
They say that 99 million years ago, a baby dinosaur about the size of a sparrow got stuck in tree sap and never made it out. Had the young dinosaur had a more auspicious day, it would have grown up to be a little smaller than an ostrich.
KATIEAND I JUST WATCHED RATATOUILLE AND WE WENT TO GO LOOK UP PORN OF IT ON PAHAEL CUZ THATS WHATS U DO AFTER A MOVIE AND WE WERE LOOKING AT THIS ONE PIECE AND WE WERE LIKE DAMN THAT LOOKS FAMILIAR AND IT WA S REBECCA SUGAR
My boss opened this business in the 60s and recently made a collage of different advertisements they’ve run through the years.
It turns out my business was making those gross waifu body pillows all the way back in the 60′s….
“TURN HER ON (1968) With the Next Best Thing. Of course you can’t bundle yourself up under the tree, so, do the next best thing. Give her a life size enlargement of your noble features, OR, preserve yourself forever on a real, soft, squeezable pillow.”
