A young coelurosaur nicknamed "Eva" has its tiny, feathered tail preserved in an Amber. It was found in 2015 when paleontologist Lida Xing from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing was visiting a market in northern Myanmar.
After finding the Amber, Lida Xing knew the branch-like object stuck inside held significance. Through research partially funded by National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council, they found out that the object is actually the feathered tail of a dinosaur as big as a sparrow. According to Xing, the tail is there for 99 million years. It's not just feathers, however. It is very well-preserved that the bones, soft tissues and feathers are still intact.
A coelurosaur is a bird-like theropod dinosaur closely related to iconic meat-eaters Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor. Theropods come in all sizes, and "Eva" was believed to have grown up to be a tad smaller than an ostrich.
How did Xing and her colleagues determine that it wasn't a regular bird's feathered tail, but a dinosaur's? According to NPR, the tail is curved at an angle that it's impossible to be owned by a bird. At 1.4 inches and eight vertebrae, it is also covered in delicate but dense feathers, which may have functioned to regulate the body temperature of the coelurosaur. With this observation, they hypothesized that the animal would have been incapable of flying. Furthermore, Yahoo! News reported that Xing and his team believes that it may be from the middle to the end of a long tail of about 25 or more vertebrae.
Lida Xing and his team of researchers however, do not stop in identifying the type of animal associated with the feathered tail. It also enables further study on the evolution of feathers and feathered-animals, and even the development of pigments and colors in the feathers of animals.
Lida Xing did not expect to find such a remarkable fossil in an Amber in Myanmar. The exciting discovery holds so much promise of finding more. What Xing and his team hopes to find is a whole dinosaur preserved in Amber.
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