On 20 16, team Xing Lida discovered the ancient bird wings and non-bird dinosaur contents in amber for the first time in the world. "We found several pieces of more complete ancient bird amber in 20 15. Although the three-dimensional reconstruction of bones took a lot of time and energy, the results were very shocking. " Xing Lida introduced, "The research shows that the specimen published this time is a relatively complete anti-bird chick, which records the characteristics of its bones and feathers in the first few weeks."
This specimen comes from one of the famous amber producing areas, Kang Hu Valley, Kachin State, northern Myanmar. The amber here is about 99 million years ago. Xing Lida said, "This bird is petite. At that time, it lived in a humid tropical environment in northern Myanmar. Unfortunately, it was wrapped in the resin of conifers such as cypress or araucaria, which formed amber in the long geological era and has been preserved to this day. "
The ancient bird specimens in amber are extremely well preserved, especially the golden bird feet about 2 cm long are particularly eye-catching. "Its scales and silky feathers are lifelike and its claws are sharp. At that time, the locals thought it was a lizard claw, but I realized that this specimen was particularly special and more like a bird's foot. " Chen Guang, the owner of the specimen and director of Tengchong Amber Pavilion Museum, recalled, "We later chose to cooperate with Xing Lida's team to study, and he confirmed my guess that it was really a bird's foot! My wife nicknamed this specimen' Buron', which is the local pronunciation of an amber bird (Little Lark) in Myanmar. "
Bai Ming, an associate researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Li Gang, an associate researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told reporters that after obtaining the specimen, the research team only noticed a pair of very beautiful bird feet at first, and then used nondestructive equipment such as micro-CT to image and analyze the specimen, only to find that important information, such as skull and spine, is still hidden in amber. Through the reconstruction, segmentation and fusion of CT data, the high-definition three-dimensional shapes of all bones are finally obtained without loss.
Experts believe that Buron specimen is the most complete fossil of ancient birds in amber in Myanmar at present. This is an anti-bird chick born a few weeks ago. The particularity of amber makes it preserve the richest details of young birds' bones and soft tissues in human history, which provides new evidence for human beings to understand the remarkable differences in development between anti-birds and birds today.