Dinosaur Feathers in Amber
September 15, 2011 5:15 PM   Subscribe

 
I heard about this on the radio earlier. It's great to have pictures to go with the words. How totally amazing. I wonder, if we hadn't figured out a while back that dinosaurs were feathered ancestors of birds, how we would have interpreted such a discovery.

It felt like, for a while a couple of decades ago, there were no really interesting discoveries happening. And now it feels like there's all kinds of amazing discoveries being announced all the time. A lot of them are advances in medicine and such, but then there's stuff like this. Dino feathers! For real! Not even fossils, but trapped in amber!

It's amazing!
posted by hippybear at 5:41 PM on September 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


Agreed.

And Obligatory:

"I'm sure the preserve is completely safe..."
posted by Windopaene at 5:43 PM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


OH MY GOD THIS IS AWESOME.
posted by phunniemee at 5:44 PM on September 15, 2011 [5 favorites]


...trapped in amber!

In an alternate universe, much like our own, Jurassic Park is a 70s art-house movie, and "Trapped in amber!" is the tagline and a line a character (our Jeff Goldblum?) utters in a throaty, awed whisper: "...trapped in AMBER!", and this line is the button on the trailer, and in TV ads, and becomes a meme in its own right, and is synonymous with the film itself. "Trapped in AMBER!"

I think I drank too much coffee this morning.
posted by zardoz at 5:53 PM on September 15, 2011 [4 favorites]


Wow! Everytime i see ostriches, i think to myself, they move as i imagine raptors and the like to move--they seem to have a memory of this kind of movement
posted by PinkMoose at 5:54 PM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


In other prehistoric beastie news: Giant Ancient Crocodile Uncovered in Colombia
posted by homunculus at 5:57 PM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


That God, what a cheeky fellow - putting down fake dinosaur bones and fake dinosaur feathers! Is there anything he doesn't think of?
posted by XMLicious at 6:06 PM on September 15, 2011 [10 favorites]




These obviously fell off the wings of the angels sent to bury the bones!
posted by Abiezer at 6:09 PM on September 15, 2011 [12 favorites]


Perhaps it could be placed in a conspicuous location on the interviewer's desk during the next Republican Presidential Candidate's debate Otherwise known as "The Republican Story Hour"--or "If I say it often enough even I may start to believe it". Or as a previous poster intimated--whimsical God creates feathers in amber to test the commitment of Creationists.
posted by rmhsinc at 6:25 PM on September 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


In other prehistoric beastie news: Giant Ancient Crocodile Uncovered in Colombia

No need to go prehistoric.
posted by curious nu at 6:29 PM on September 15, 2011


awesome!
posted by supermedusa at 6:51 PM on September 15, 2011


things to ponder when downing that last mcnugget: dinosaurs were nothing but giant chickens.
posted by liza at 7:06 PM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


"I'm sure the preserve is completely safe..."

And then, quel surprise, they all ate the dinosaur jelly and spent the rest of the movie on the toilet.

(It's such a blatant ripoff of Romeo & Juliet it's not even funny.)
posted by Sys Rq at 7:11 PM on September 15, 2011


"Dinofuzz" gives me an idea for a buddy mov- ah shit been done
posted by condour75 at 7:44 PM on September 15, 2011


Much as I love all the new theories (new since my childhood anyway) about dinosaur coloring, and feathers, it mostly means that the kids' books I read to my son about dinosaurs feature animals who appear to be wearing fringed feather sleeves, in lurid colors, over a typical scaly dinosaur skin. Maybe they did look like that, but mostly they look like that taxidermied lion, in terms of being a patchwork of guessed-at attributes. It doesn't help that no two artists seem clear on the proportionate size of a T-rex's arms to the rest of his body.

And now we have the artistic horror that is Dinosaur Train, (warning, audio) which not only dresses up these noble creatures in lurid colors and occasionally clothes (and makes them drive a fucking timewarp train), but presents t-rex as the wide-eyed friend of leaf-eating dinos, who eats unspecified "meat". Just not the meat that is right in front of him, wearing a conductor hat.

So now we have fuzz, huh? Furry dinos ahoy, then.
posted by emjaybee at 7:56 PM on September 15, 2011


things to ponder when downing that last mcnugget: dinosaurs were nothing but giant chickens.

Some of us love that McPterodactyl sandwich that comes around every few months thank you very much.
posted by cashman at 8:07 PM on September 15, 2011


dinosaurs were nothing but giant chickens

And some are trying to engineer chickens into being tiny dinosaurs.
posted by hippybear at 8:09 PM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


"Dinofuzz" gives me an idea for a buddy mov- ah shit been done

Bud Cort. Carol Kane. Richard Roundtree. Joe Dallesandro. All are listed in the credits of the 1995 direct-to-video futuristic dinosaur buddy cop movie Theodore Rex.

Flabbergasted.

posted by Sys Rq at 8:53 PM on September 15, 2011


(Completely OT: I'm really not trying to be an ass, but I yearn for the day when we can separate our scientific advances from our popular-culture references. It would be nice to just exult the discoveries on their own for what they are. Sorry, not trying to be insulting. Please flag this and move on.)
posted by Ron Thanagar at 11:05 PM on September 15, 2011


In other prehistoric beastie news: Giant Ancient Crocodile Uncovered in Colombia

What on earth is it chasing in that picture th- oh, wow.
posted by Catseye at 6:34 AM on September 16, 2011


Crazy how Jesus goes through all that trouble to fool us, huh?
posted by Threeway Handshake at 7:32 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


Phalene: Fuuuuuuuzzy! *Chases hapless prehistoric animal around*
...
rounds the corner, sees gigantic, fluffy, feathered Mama Prehistoric Animal...
...
starts running...

"AHHHH! FUZZZZZZY! HELLLP!"
posted by IAmBroom at 9:19 AM on September 16, 2011


So fuzzy purple Barney is true? Arrrrghhh!!
posted by mermayd at 1:32 PM on September 16, 2011


In other paleontology news: A 5-Year-Old Girl Dug Up a 160 Million Year Old Fossil
posted by homunculus at 2:07 PM on September 16, 2011






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