Ancient dinosaur dropping yields well-preserved feather
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Paleontologists studying a 66-million-year-old fossilised dinosaur dropping from Montana identified a feather within it.
UWBM 103150, the coprolite, contained a one-centimetre feather belonging to a primitive aquatic bird. Researchers determined the bird had recently eaten a fish before being consumed by a carnivorous dinosaur. The feather likely helped the bird stay waterproof and came from a member of the Hesperornithiformes order. These birds went extinct 66 million years ago following a meteor impact.
Jingmai O’Connor of the Field Museum of Chicago and colleagues suggest the Hesperornithiformes may have died out because their feathers were less suited to cold temperatures than those of the Neornithes, the group that includes modern birds. The team published their findings in Current Biology on September 10.
