It sounds like something out of Jurassic Park and it is strikingly similar: scientists have found baby dinosaur feathers encased in amber.
An international team of researchers — including Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum — found the samples in northeastern Mynamar in 2015.
READ MORE: Here’s why we can’t clone a dinosaur — but we can make a chickenosaurus
The wings likely belonged to enantiornithes, a group of bird-like dinosaurs that went extinct by the end of the Cretaceous Period. Along with the feathers are skin, claws and even muscles.
The dark brown feathers are believed to have belonged to two juveniles and they were likely of the same species.
It’s been known for decades that many dinosaurs were feathered, but little detail is known about these feathers, making the finding an incredibly important one.
“We don’t get something like this. It’s mind-blowingly cool.”
Though finding feathers embedded in amber is a pretty amazing discovery, don’t expect a prehistoric theme park just yet: scientists have found that cloning from samples encased in amber just isn’t possible.
The findings were reported in the science journal Nature and were partially funded by the National Geographic Society’s Expeditions Council.
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