December, 8, 2016

A dinosaur tail was found preserved in amber, complete with feathers, soft tissue, and bones. This tail is apart of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur. This is important because they have only found individual feathers in amber but never a full fledged tail.

The amber sample is almost translucent, and about the size of dried apricot. Inside the amber is a 1.4-inch attachment that is covered in chestnut brown feathers. CAT scans and microscopic analysis shows that the sample has 8 vertebrae from the middle or end of a long and thin tail. The tail may have been originally made up of 25 or more vertebrae. Also based on the structure of the tail, the dinosaur could be a coelurosaur. A coelurosaur is apart of a group of theropod dinosaurs that includes everyone from a T-Rex to modern birds.

I got my information from: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/feathered-dinosaur-tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/