An amazing piece of amber from the Cretaceous period. “[This] was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels and creating numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now extinct marine reptiles, ammonites and rudists, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land.” – Wikipedia
A geologic timeline of the Earth’s history
For a hint at the organisms that were alive at that time and a way of putting this amount of time in perspective, I borrowed this timeline from the Cave of the Mounds webpage.
by Matthew Cobb
This popped up on my FB page, shared by a pal, ‘Spider’ Dave Penney. It’s a piece of Lower Cretaceous amber from Burma (Myanmar), which was dated with U-Pb dating of Zircons as 98.79 ± 0.62 Ma. As you can see, it is amazing and contains about 16 small wing feathers, apparently still attached to a piece of wing bone or skin.
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Note: I have removed this photo because I received information that the photograph was copyrighted and that the specimen, now owned by another museum, is under study and doesn’t wish to have the photograph shown until publication. I will respect those wishes and have removed the photograph.
I will restore the photograph when the publication is out.
The picture was posted by Günter Bechly of Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart. Günter says:
Our trader informed me yesterday, that he could potentially acquire the…
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