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Shanghai museum receives gift from Eva, the amber dinosaur
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A 3D model of a feathered dinosaur tail trapped in an amber 99 million years ago — an unprecedented discovery — was gifted to the Shanghai Natural History Museum yesterday by the research team, which included a Chinese scientist.
The amber, named Eva, is believed to be the first mummified skeleton of a non-avian dinosaur ever discovered, said China University of Geosciences professor Xing Lida, who found the specimen and who gave a lecture at the museum yesterday.
“We can for the first time see a real dinosaur instead of just guessing about its look,” he said.
“Amber itself is like a world. It can contain and well preserve things from long ago. Like the tail section — we can see its feather, skin and bone. It’s very close to what it would have looked like when the dinosaur was alive.”
The museum said it will add the model, a 3D mock-up of the caudal vertebrae behind the feathers, to its public display.
The research was led by Xing and Ryan McKellar of Canada’s Royal Saskatchewan Museum. And the discovery was published in this month’s issue of Current Biology.
The specimen originated the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar and was found by Xing and his team last year at an amber market in Myanmar.
The fluffy plumage, with brown features on the front and pale white feathers on the back, is 6 centimeters long, by which scientists suggest that it may belong to a sparrow-sized dinosaur only 18.5cm in total length.
“We can image a scene that this dinosaur was chasing an insect, but suddenly a big drop tree resin trapped it,” Xing said. Amber is preserved tree resin.
The bone structure suggests the dinosaur may belong to the coelurosaurian branch while feather implies it may be of maniraptora branch, said Xu Xing, a paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Xing said it was hard to interpret if Eva was male or female, a young dinosaur or just a tiny adult due to a lack of DNA. But the researchers say it was most likely a juvenile, non-avian theropod — a group of dinosaurs that includes velociraptors and tyrannosaurs.
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