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<\/a><\/p>\nWhile some dinosaurs are thought to have had \u2018fuzzy\u2019 or \u2018downy\u2019 feathers (shown in this illustration as the yellow spikes on a Nanotyrannus\u2019 neck), ancient birds (such as the one in the Nanotyrannus\u2019 mouth) were more likely to have had feathers that look similar to the birds of today. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe rarely find fossils of birds and even more rarely their feathers, giving us such important insight into the evolution of this key aspect of their biology,\u201d said Professor Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a researcher at the University of Washington and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn top of that, these bird feathers found within a large fossilized dinosaur dung give us an incredible window into predator-prey interactions 66 million years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
The coprolite was discovered in 2016 in the Hell Creek Formation<\/a> of Montana by Burke Museum paleontologist David DeMar Jr.<\/p>\n The specimen was from a large predatory dinosaur, possibly a Tyrannosaurus rex or a Nanotyrannus.<\/p>\n It contained multiple feathers, fish scales from a gar, and bones from a hesperornithiform<\/a>, an extinct, loon-like diving bird.<\/p>\n The researchers reasoned that the feathers must have also come from the same bird.<\/p>\n Crucially, these are the first hesperornithiform feathers ever identified, and they appear to represent an evolutionary middle ground \u2014 some feathers looked modern and waterproof, while others were smaller, fuzzy and primitive, resembling those of earlier dinosaurs.<\/p>\n