99-Million-Year-Old Baby Bird Preserved in Burmese Amber Stuns Experts

The remains of a 99 million-year-old Enantiornithes baby bird, uniquely preserved, were found in a piece of Burmese amber from Myanmar. According to the scientists who published the corresponding article in the journal Gondwana Research, this is the most complete bird fossil ever found in Burmese amber, but for its full study, they had to resort to computed tomography methods.

Originally, the small 9-centimeter piece of amber containing fossils was found by amber collectors in the Yukon Valley in northern Myanmar. In 2014, it was acquired by the director of the Chinese Amber Museum in Tengchun City (Yunnan Province). The find was kept there for some time.

The visible part of the fossil looks like the paw of some strange lizard, and only experts were able to discern in it a bird’s paw from the time of the dinosaurs. Read the free article.