66-million-year-old feather in dinosaur poop may reveal why birds survived the asteroid

A feather discovered inside 66-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur poop may help explain why modern birds survived the asteroid catastrophe. The extinct bird it came from had more primitive insulating feathers, suggesting superior plumage may have helped the ancestors of living birds endure the deadly impact winter. Remarkably, evidence of that ancient meal survived in fossilized feces, preserving what researchers describe as the finest feather specimen yet discovered from the age of dinosaurs.

By examining that feather, scientists say they may have uncovered an important clue to why birds became the only dinosaur lineage to survive the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The findings were reported in Current Biology. "It’s such a beautiful, well-preserved feather, from such an unexpected source, and it’s exciting that it could help us answer this huge question in paleontology," says Jingmai O’Connor, the lead author of the new paper and the associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Why Some Birds Survived the Asteroid Birds are a highly specialized branch of the dinosaur family tree, with a history stretching deep into the Mesozoic Era. The oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, lived about 150 million years ago.