A feather barb within Late Cretaceous Canadian amber that shows some indication of original coloration. The oblong brown masses within the dark-field photomicrograph are concentrated regions of pigmentation within the barbules. In this specimen, the overall feather color appears to have been medium or dark-brown.IMAGE © SCIENCE/AAAS
After rummaging through thousands of amber inclusions housed at the University of Alberta and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Canada, researchers discovered 11 amber encased-feather fossils that provide the most detailed picture yet of early feather evolution. The feathers, described in a Science paper published today (September 15), likely adorned early birds and non-avian dinosaurs living between 70 and 85 million years ago—back when the Western Canadian landscape was a wetland covered in coniferous forests—and they represent various stages of feather evolution: from primitive single filaments, to multiple filaments joined through a single stem, to the intricate hook-like barbules found in modern birds. The latter feather type was a surprising find, according to Mark A. Norell, curator of fossil reptiles, amphibians, and birds ...
