BirdingGirl

Here is some interesting news I just came across—the first traces of color in a bird feather were discovered in a 47 million year-old fossil. Image Source: ScientificComputing.com Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article: To find well-preserved feathers, the scientists traveled this May to a famed fossil site in Germany near the village of Messel, where exquisitely preserved 47-million-year-old bird fossils are regularly dug up in an old quarry pit. The scientists inspected several fossils and removed small pieces from 12 fossilized feathers. They returned home to put the material under a scanning electron microscope. “You can see a surface of beautifully packed together melanosomes,” said Richard Prum, a Yale expert on feather colors. “This looks exactly like a grackle or a starling, where you have a dark glossy bird with a metallic sheen.” To read the entire New York Times article visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/science/01feath.html I personally think Grackle fea...