Feather in Burmese Amber
Featured in this listing is one of the most exciting inclusions you can find in Cretaceous amber. A genuine feather trapped in 100 million year old Burmite! It is known that many dinosaurs evolved feathers to keep warm, and later avian dinosaurs (from which modern birds descend) evolved to make use of them in flight. A news article recently featured an entire limb covered in feathers that was discovered in Kachin State in Myanmar. That specimen is no doubt priceless, but this single feather in amber is far more affordable! While I cannot guarantee that is a feather from a dinosaur, I think it has a chance. This is not a large feather, but it is a perfect feather.
Burmese Amber, or Burmite is a fossilized resin which is believed to have emanated from an extinct species of tropical conifer tree that once grew in the area that is now Burma/Myanmar during the mid to late Cretaceous, between 90-105 million years ago. It has been suggested that these trees came from the Agathis genus, and are therefore related to the Kauri gum tree (Agathis australis) an extant species responsible for the formation of Kauri gum, the famous copal that was once mined extensively in New Zealand for use in varnish.
The inclusions you see in Burmese amber are older than the Tyrannosaurus Rex, but could well have lived amongst contemporaneous local dinosaurs such as Microceratus, a type of dinosaur that lived in Asia and featured in the film 'Jurassic Park' (and the more recent 'Jurassic World').
