Nature Communications (Jun 2016)

Mummified precocial bird wings in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber

  • Lida Xing,
  • Ryan C. McKellar,
  • Min Wang,
  • Ming Bai,
  • Jingmai K. O’Connor,
  • Michael J. Benton,
  • Jianping Zhang,
  • Yan Wang,
  • Kuowei Tseng,
  • Martin G. Lockley,
  • Gang Li,
  • Weiwei Zhang,
  • Xing Xu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12089
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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The plumage of Cretaceous birds has previously been described only from compression fossils and isolated feathers in amber. Here, Xing et al.describe two 99 million year old bird wings found preserved in amber, enabling new insight into the evolution of feather arrangement, pigmentation, and structure.