A first year paleontology student, Aaron van der Reest, who was studying at the University of Atlanta recently came across a well-preserved dinosaur fossil.
Although it doesn't seem like too much, the surprising and most interesting part is that the fossil was found with its tail features and some soft tissue intact.
Called the Ornithomimus - "bird mimic" - the dinosaur existed during the Late Cretaceous period, which is now known as North Africa. The findings have been described in the journal Cretaceous Research.
"This fossil was originally found in 2009," study author Reest shared. "It was collected and left to sit in storage for four years... within 20 minutes of starting to work on it, I found the tail... and then some black lines I recognized."
Those black lines apparently were feather components. IFLScience explains the feathered dinosaur:
"This feathered, toothless reptile was a theropod ("beast feet"), a dinosaur type that's a subset of the saurischian group of dinosaurs, a mostly carnivorous collection of ancient reptiles. All of the saurischians died out at the end of the famous asteroid-induced extinction event 65 million years ago - except, of course, the birds, their surviving descendants.
"Unlike most modern birds, these ancient ostrich-like creatures couldn't fly, but probably used feathers for thermoregulation - controlling their body temperature. 'Ostriches use bare skin to thermoregulate,' said Reest in a statement. 'Because the plumage on this specimen is virtually identical to that of an ostrich, we can infer that 'Ornithomimus' was likely doing the same thing, using feathered regions on their body to maintain body temperature. It would've looked a lot like an ostrich.'"
Thanks to the excellent preservation methods used, the study authors were given the opportunity to examine the soft tissue that was found.
Aaron van der Reest explains, "It was probably preserved in a rapid burial by a river, covered in a fine mud with a low microbial content, protecting it from oxygen-based decomposition."
Turns out, from the mid-thigh bone all the way down to its feet, the dinosaur had bare skin. Because of sediment compaction over time, the feathers ended up being crushed.
However, the protein structures, which were responsible for the feathers - keratin - were found by a scanning electron microscope. With this technology, it showed a 3D feather pattern on both the tail and body of the dinosaur.
Apparently, the new findings will help in finding the links between dinosaurs and birds. Check out an illustration of the dinosaur here.
