>>MARK NORELL: Two papers
appear in Science this week, both of which have important
implications for the study of fossil feathers, ancient
feathers, and the origin of feathers. One of these has to do with
feathers which were discovered preserved in amber,
in rocks that are about 80 million years
old, from southern Alberta in Canada. Now, these are really
spectacular because what they show is all of the
different types of feathers, from very primitive feathers,
like in tyrannosaurus, to the sorts of feathers that
one sees in modern birds today, like loons and grebes
and water birds. The importance of finding these
fossils preserved in amber really tells us that some of
these very primitive feathers, like the ones that
are on the most primitive feathered dinosaurs,
ones which have been found in China that are about
150 million years old, is that kind of
feather was still present at the very end of
the typical dinosaur times. And these feathers
are from things like Tyrannosaurus,
Compsognathus, and other carnivorous dinosaurs. A second paper appearing
in Science this week uses a new technique
of using a synchrotron to be able to look at very,
very minute trace elements that signify color in some of
these extinct dinosaurs, specifically, their feathers. Now, the importance of using
the synchrotron as opposed to other ways of which of
looking at color and fossil feathers, is that
first we can look at places where the remaining
color is in very, very small concentrations. Also, we don't have to
destroy the specimens the way we would typically have to do,
if we used traditional methods. So while I think that some of
the observations in this paper are very preliminary, I think
that it opens a whole new field and provides us with
a whole new technique to look at some
of these problems. Over the last decade and a half,
one of the great discoveries, I think, in all of science
is our understanding, now, that many of the dinosaurs
that we always took for granted as giant, scaly
sorts of animals, actually, were covered with feathers
when they were alive. Now, what we would
predict, just on the basis of our understanding of
bird brains and bird vision, that these feathers were
probably brightly colored. Now, we're starting to
understand something about the color of
fossil feathers. We're really at a
really early stage of understanding these colors. But I think, over
the next year or so, we're going to make some
significant advances.