The Canadian Press
REGINA—Researchers say they’ve found the 99-million-year-old tail of a theropod dinosaur preserved in amber and a Canadian is key to the discovery.
The specimen was purchased from a Myanmar amber market in 2015 by Lida Xing, a professor at the China University of Geosciences, who recognized its potential.
Ryan McKellar, curator at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, researched the find with his Chinese counterpart and says it’s unique.
This is the first time dinosaur bone material and feathers have been found preserved together in the same piece of amber.
McKellar said feathers have been linked to dinosaurs before, but not this clearly.
“We found feathers, but there’s always been the underlying question of who the feathers belong to,” McKellar said at the museum in Regina.
“In this case, we actually get to see how they attach to the tail, and the tail itself provides us some clues as to which group of animals it came from.”
