Soft tissue and decayed blood from the tail were identified in the amber as well. However, no genetic material was preserved.
“It’s amazing to see all the details of a dinosaur tail—the bones, flesh, skin, and feathers—and to imagine how this little fellow got his tail caught in the resin and then presumably died because he could not wrestle free,” said Mike Benton, a co-author of the study.
Before it wound up in the market, the amber was in a mine in the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar, an area that is likely rich with diverse plant and animal life from the Cretaceous period. Much of it gets entombed in amber.
After the mining process, large pieces of amber often get broken up to be turned into jewelry. Hopefully, the complete specimen can be found one day and show how the dinosaur’s feathers were arranged on its body.
The details of the findings were published in Current Biology.
