The article "100-Million-Year-Old Amber Holds Tiny, Feathery Chick" explains a very recent discovery of a chick from the Cretaceous era preserved in Burmese amber at incredible detail. The amber was found in a mine in Myanmar and is currently the most complete specimen ever found. It is believed that this chick was just born before it was preserved in the amber. since it is very complete scientists plan to make a 3D digital reconstuction to find more out about the bird. To do the reconstruction they had to cut the amber. However during the cut they cut the skull in half and damaged the bones around the skull as well as the beak. the reconstuction at the moment shows a chick which looks very similar to one today. The amber fossils and technology have given us the the ability to see into past and to be able to create reconstuctions very close to what the organism would have looked like.
I enjoyed this article because I found it interesting that so much could be determined and found out from one small fossil. The reconstruction and just the DNA sampling could lead to new breakthroughs about previous theories.
Weisberger, Mindy. "100-Million-Year-Old Amber Holds Tiny, Feathery Chick." LiveScience. Purch, 09 June 2017. Web. 18 June 2017.
https://www.livescience.com/59432-cretaceous-chick-in-amber.html
I find it interesting that they decided to attempt to separate the Chick from the Amber. If they found it and it was so well preserved, wouldn't separating it from the amber make it decay faster? But I do find it cool that they were able to use 3D imaging to sort of figure out what the specimen could have looked like when it was alive.
ReplyDeleteI find it odd that it was born then almost immediately entrapped and preserved in amber. I've seen bugs and such trapped in amber, but a full blown chick? That's gotta be one hell of an Amber patch.
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