Scientists have discovered a beautifully preserved feather hidden inside a piece of fossilised dinosaur poo, known as a coprolite, that is around 66 million years old.
The coprolite, about half the size of a golf ball, was actually dug up back in 2016 in the Hell Creek Formation in eastern Montana, in the United States. Researchers only recently studied it closely enough to discover the incredible feather inside, along with tiny fish scales and leg bones from an ancient diving bird.
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology. Scientists, including Gregory Wilson Mantilla and David DeMar Jr from the University of Washington, along with Nathan Carroll from the Carter County Museum and lead author Jingmai O’Connor from the Field Museum, say two of the feathers have features that are only found in living birds and their closest ancestors.
One expert described it as having “a square feather shaft with a sponge-like centre,” something no other feather from the age of the dinosaurs has been found to have. The discovery happened right around the time a giant asteroid strike wiped out about 75 percent of all life on Earth, including most dinosaurs.
Scientists hope studying feathers like this one might help explain why some birds survived that mass extinction, while others sadly did not.
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