Picture
a bird hatching from an egg and falling out of the nest in Burma. It
landed on a part of the tree that had sap oozing from it and became
stuck. More sap fell on the hatchling until it was completely encased in
sap. Skip ahead 99 million years, and that bird, now a fossil encased
in amber, was found and taken to the Hupoge Amber Museum in Tengchong
City, China.
Unlike modern birds, this newborn
hatchling is from a now-extinct branch of the family tree called
Enantiornithines. Researchers say they would have looked a lot like
modern-day avians, with the exception of some added features such as
claws on their wing tips and small teeth tucked away in their beaks.
Read the article about this find
at BGR and the scientific paper
here.
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