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An ancient Chinese bird kept its feathers, and colors, for 130M years
- nullnilvoid 10y ago130M years is a long time. What kept the protein for such a long time?
- tomcam 10y agoSadly, nothing kept the protein. It's fossilized, just like everything else with the bird. The proteins are identified by their placement in the cells. The scientist mention they could be other microbes that they were fortunate enough to have the colors left for better context.
- T-zex 10y agoWhy is this bird Chinese? Humans did not exist back then.
- kingdomcome50 10y agoExactly my first thought
- in_the_sticks 10y agoHow else would you suggest they describe where in the world it was found?
- supercoder 10y agoMy guess is because it was found in China.
- jordache 10y agoIt's Pangean yo!
- ASalazarMX 10y agoIt wasn't Chinese then, but it is now.
- theodorejb 10y agoHow do they know it is 130 million years old?
- thecopy 10y agoCarbon dating, presumably.
- muricula 10y agoCarbon dating is not a magic bullet and would not work here. C14 dating can't be used to date samples more than 50,000 years ago because C14 has a relatively short half life and most of it would have decayed by then(0). Additionally, C14 dating doesn't work on fossils because much of the carbon has been replaced by different minerals. Uranium lead dating is typically held as accurate for rocks between 1 million and 4.5 billion years ago, so they probably used this. However, there may not be any uranium in the fossil itself so they may have looked at stratigraphic layers of volcanic ash, which would have sufficient amounts of uranium, above or below the fossil to arrive at this date(1). This is really speculation without looking at the study where I'm sure they discuss it in detail. (0) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93lead_dating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93lead_dating
- PeterWhittaker 10y agoFunny, when I read this, I thought it was about a bird whose feathers were essentially unchanged for 130 million of years of existence - it didn't occur to me until I saw the article that it was about fossilization.