Vivian on 8/12/2016 at 20:59

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Nat Geo popsci piece ((http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/feathered-dinosaur-tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/))

Actual paper ((http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(16)31193-9.pdf) NB: IT IS XU FUCKING XING AGAIN. Is it illegal for a chinese theropod to be published on without including him?

So on the face of it there is not too much mega-novel about this, they've found a section of distal tail which can be identified to at least the Coelurosauria (very large and diverse theropod group that includes most of the fancier stuff you'll have heard of - tyrannosaurs, dromaeosaurs ('raptors'), oviraptors, ornithomimosaurs, birds etc), and it has feathers. Any dinosaur palaentologist who's not Alan Feduccia (Birds-Are-Not-Dinosaurs band leader and Wes Anderson villain) will greet that news with 'well, yeah'. BUT, what feathers! Fully 3D, fluffy filamentous feathers, very similar to the 'ornamental' feathers of flightless palaeognaths like ostriches. Just gawping at the images from this stuff you can feel the gulf of time that separates you from it. The 2D stuff just seems more abstract, it's easier to look at it and say 'ok, this used to be a bird 100 million years ago, but it looks like a kitchen tile now', whereas this stuff, it's just breathtaking. My jaw literally dropped. It still looks soft!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2016/12/08/dinosaur_tail/05_dinosaur_tail.adapt.768.1.jpg

faetal on 8/12/2016 at 22:27

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Fucking awesome. Whoever invented amber should get a Nobel or five. Is there any other way at all for things to be preserved this well?

[EDIT] Also, what kind of shit needs to be going down for stuff to get enveloped in tree sap?

Pyrian on 8/12/2016 at 22:55

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My guess is that it was already dead.

montag on 9/12/2016 at 01:22

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Nice share, Vivian! Love these kinds of things, amazing how the Dinosaurs changed since I was a kid. When I was a wee lad, they all had to live in swamps so their massive bodies could be supported by water! (link to paper is broken?)

Tony_Tarantula on 9/12/2016 at 05:46

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And.....this is just bizarre.

I was told YEARS ago by someone that I thought was a batshit insane conspiracy theorist(the kind that believes humans were genetically engineered slaves) that we'd all been lied to about the dinosaur and that it was actually a feathered creature much smaller than we'd been lead to believe.

He's going to be even more insufferable now that he's right.