{"id":7059691,"date":"2026-09-17T06:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T06:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/a-66-million-year-old-feather-trapped-in-dinosaur-poop-might-help-explain-why-some-birds-survived-mass-extinction\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T06:10:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T06:10:21","slug":"a-66-million-year-old-feather-trapped-in-dinosaur-poop-might-help-explain-why-some-birds-survived-mass-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7059691","title":{"rendered":"A 66-Million-Year-Old Feather Trapped in Dinosaur Poop Might Help Explain Why Some Birds Survived Mass Extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Discovered in Montana in 2016, the cherry-size coprolite contains feathers, bones and evidence of the bird\u2019s last meal before the creature was eaten by a theropod<\/h2>\n
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Sarah Kuta<\/a><\/p>\n

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Scientists think a\u00a0Nanotyrannus <\/em>or a young Tyrannosaurus rex<\/em> might have eaten the bird.
\n Andrey Atuchin<\/span>
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In 2016, paleontologist David DeMar Jr.<\/a> was searching for fossils in northeastern Montana when he discovered a small, broken piece of fossilized dinosaur poop. As he took a closer look, DeMar was shocked to discover a tiny, well-preserved feather embedded in the cherry-size coprolite.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe what I was seeing,\u201d DeMar, a collections manager at the University of Washington\u2019s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, tells New Scientist<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Christa Lest\u00e9-Lasserre.<\/p>\n

Now, DeMar and his colleagues have analyzed the 66-million-year-old fossilized feather, which offers a rare glimpse into the birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs. Their findings, published September 10 in the journal Current Biology<\/em><\/a>, could help explain why some birds survived the mass extinction event<\/a>\u00a0that killed all non-avian dinosaurs while others perished.<\/p>\n

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The feather is preserved inside a\u00a066-million-year-old piece of fossilized dinosaur dung.<\/p>\n

J. K. O’Connor et al., Current Biology<\/em>, 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scientists used non-invasive and non-destructive methods to analyze the fossilized dung<\/a>, including micro-CT scans and 3D surface scans. These techniques revealed two bone fragments that likely came from a hesperornithiform, a flightless, short-winged aquatic bird that was similar to a modern-day loon<\/a> or grebe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hesperornithiforms were related to neornithes, the group of birds that survived the mass extinction 66 million years ago and ultimately gave rise to all birds alive today. But hesperornithiforms belonged to a separate branch of the bird family tree and died out during the same mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

The coprolite, which researchers suspect came from a Nanotyrannus<\/em><\/a> or young Tyrannosaurus rex<\/em><\/a>, also contained multiple feathers and feather fragments. It\u2019s the first time scientists have ever discovered such exquisite plumage in a coprolite.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are quite a few fossils that show feathers, but most of the time you\u2019re just looking at impressions of feathers \u2026 the actual feather is not there,\u201d Steven Salisbury<\/a>, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland in Australia who was not involved with the study, tells Jacinta Bowler of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a>. \u201cThis is cool because it\u2019s actually the preserved feather in 3D.\u201d<\/p>\n

The primary feather, which measures about 0.37 inches long, appears to have been water-repellent. Researchers also found a smaller feather that they think came from the bird\u2019s wing.<\/p>\n

Both feathers have square shafts with lightweight, sponge-like cores encased in harder outer layers, a combination of features found in living birds and their immediate ancestors. In fact, researchers had never seen this structure in any other feather from the Mesozoic<\/a> era, which spanned 66 million to 252 million years ago. The next-oldest known example of a sponge-like feather core is roughly ten million years younger than the specimens found in the coprolite.<\/p>\n

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The coprolite fragment was discovered in Montana in 2016.<\/p>\n

David DeMar Jr.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The analysis also revealed two smaller, fuzzy body feathers that were more primitive in nature. These feathers, which likely helped insulate the birds from the cold, might be the key to why hesperornithiforms did not survive the mass extinction event.<\/p>\n

Exactly how the Chicxulub impact<\/a> some 66 million years ago triggered so many deaths worldwide remains the subject of scientific debate. But under one possible scenario, researchers think the asteroid strike sent enormous amounts of dust, sulfur and soot into the atmosphere, where they blocked sunlight and plunged Earth into a global winter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During this prolonged period of cold and darkness, plants were unable to photosynthesize, and as a result, many animals starved to death. The feathers suggest some creatures may also have died because they simply couldn\u2019t withstand the cold temperatures. The fluffy body feathers the researchers found in the coprolite might have been \u201cgood enough to keep [the birds] warm during the greenhouse world of the Mesozoic, but not good enough to keep them warm during this environmental catastrophe that was triggered by [the Chicxulub] impact event,\u201d lead author Jingmai O\u2019Connor<\/a>, a paleontologist and associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago, tells New Scientist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Embedded in the coprolite, scientists also discovered two small fish scales that likely came from a gar. The fish was probably the bird\u2019s last meal, consumed shortly before the bird itself was swallowed by the dinosaur that produced the coprolite, according to the team.<\/p>\n

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Did you know? Food chain time capsule<\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, scientists reported the discovery of a rare fossil that revealed a 100-million-year-old, three-tier food chain<\/a>: a pterosaur eaten by an ichthyosaur eaten by a pliosaur.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cA dinosaur ate an aquatic bird that ate a particular type of fish,\u201d Julia Clarke<\/a>, a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved with the research, tells NPR<\/a>\u2019s Ari Daniel. It\u2019s \u201calmost like they\u2019ve discovered a Cretaceous turducken<\/a>,\u201d a dish featuring a\u00a0chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey.<\/p>\n

Jokes aside, Clarke is not convinced that the body feathers preserved in the coprolite are enough to explain the fate of birds during the mass extinction. \u201cIt\u2019s a stretch to explain the survivorship of some [species] and the extinction of others from that evidence,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Zooming out, the study suggests that coprolites may be a largely untapped source of information about ancient birds and the creatures that ate them. Scientists may want to take another look at any fossilized feces already sitting in museum collections.<\/p>\n

Very few animals are capable of digesting keratin<\/a>, the tough, fibrous material that makes up bird feathers, so \u201cit is reasonable to expect that feathers might be common in feces,\u201d study co-author Karen Chin<\/a>, a paleontologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, tells National Geographic<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Riley Black.<\/p>\n

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