Baby Bird from Time of Dinosaurs Found Fossilized in Amber (99 million years old)

An extinct bird was found in fossilized in amber and it is about 99,000,000 years old. This bird has teeth, and was only a day or 2 old when it was engulfed in amber.

The remains of a baby bird from the time of the dinosaurs have been discovered in a specimen of 99-million-year-old amber, according to scientists writing in the journal Gondwana Research.

The hatchling belonged to a major group of birds known as enantiornithes, which went extinct along with dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago. Funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council, this discovery is providing critical new information about these ancient, toothed birds and how they differed from modern birds.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

I guess there is a big deposit of amber with all sorts of fossils from the same time frame as the baby bird, all from Burmese.

Mined in the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar, Burmese amber deposits contain possibly the largest variety of animal and plant life from the Cretaceous period, which lasted from 145.5 to 65.5 million years ago.

a reply to: seasonal

Too bad for the bird - good for us.

Great find.

Thanks!

peace

a reply to: silo13

Damn that's amazing... I wonder if we can polish it up any more to be able to see it clearer.

Extinct Birds and feathered wings in amber, and that almost mummified dinosaur... interesting times for paleontology.

poor bird..i just imagine a big prehistoric glob of treesap falling into a nest .. 99 million year old freak accident

a reply to: seasonal

Is it just me, or is that thing's head and beak about as long as the rest of its body?

a reply to: 0racle

I guess it was either that or eventually get eaten. Life is/was brutal.

a reply to: ketsuko

Well the thing had teeth in it's beak, and it was really young when it was encased in amber.

The area that this bird was found in is amber rich, and I would imagine we can look forward to many many more interesting finds.

a reply to: seasonal

But the earth is only 6000 years old.......

Another one of God's tricks sent to test us?

Seriously, great find.

a reply to: Freeborn

Yeah well I got yelled at asking if I was born in 1937 making the same comment on another post haha!

Anyways, that's pretty interesting, how do we know it wasn't a baby dinosaur species or related but just happens to look like today's birds?

a reply to: 38181

The story gets pretty deep into the hows, whats and whys.

Looks like they studied it up one side and down the other.

a reply to: seasonal

fake news! .
God created everything about 6-7 thousand years ago when he was bored one day (in God years).

that little guy was probably one of the millions of species Noah couldn't fit into his ark. (probably)
/sarc.

nice find.

a reply to: 0racle

How badass were tree's back then..so many critters swallowed up in Amber.
Cool find.

I remember another article not too long back from the same time period and location which was feathers:
Dinosaur Tail


Maybe a flock of these things landed in amber or something.

originally posted by: Slanter
a reply to: silo13

Damn that's amazing... I wonder if we can polish it up any more to be able to see it clearer.

Extinct Birds and feathered wings in amber, and that almost mummified dinosaur... interesting times for paleontology.

It has mud and carbonized plant inclusions, so it won't be cleared up by polishing.
They have done CT scans though and were able to make an artists rendition of how it would appear if the amber were removed.

a reply to: butcherguy

I wish they would have shown the scans, it would help to get a better idea of what we are looking at.

a reply to: seasonal

I suppose that a Chinese paleontologist will produce a paper on it if not already. Hopefully there will be more details there.
The part that was new to me was that they believe these Cretaceous birds were hatched fully fledged and able to fly shortly afterwards.

a reply to: JDeLattre89

I remember reading that it's likely the rest of that dinosaur (tail trapped in amber dude) was sold in pieces to private buyers. That would be nice if that were the case and the buyer(s) shared photos of the animal with the rest of us.

a reply to: MaryaNoxx

A winged feathered bird with a tail that also has teeth in it's beak?

That would be a very interesting find, I hope they do share photos.

Why the hell is it that some people here feel compelled to bait the fundamentalists with their 6,000 year old earth comments when the article is simply about a fossil find? No one seems to care if they do that, yet I'm sure their would be hell to pay if there were people whose comments tried to relate these finds to Islam, gender identity, or (God forbid) Donald Trump some how.

Trying to twist the subject into a crack about someone's religious beliefs isn't contributing anything and makes you look ignorant. I don't think such comments can be remotely considered funny if that is what you are going for. I feel that those comments are unnecessary and completely off topic.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: seasonal

Is it just me, or is that thing's head and beak about as long as the rest of its body?

just what are you seeing...?

I took a mere 20-25 seconds of viewing the amber to see that grossly huge head you see... but all I could see were more than 12 other bird heads w/beaks but no bodies scattered all over the fossil...

I am certain my brain is 'seeing' birds heads in the random patterns from the various marks/scratches and folds in the Amber piece...
the specimen head & beak looks like that DoDo in Alice-in-Wonderland to my eye