Palaeontology

This photograph is of part of a bird wing preserved in amber from northern Myanmar. It dates from 99m years ago, during the Cretaceous period, and is described in this week's Nature Communications by Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences, in Beijing, and her colleagues. It is one of two wings, the first known to have been preserved in amber, that her team discovered. Both belonged to juveniles of a group called the Enantiornithes that had claws on their wings (one such is marked with an arrow), probably to help them grip trunks and branches when they climbed trees.
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