Fiann Smithwick

Fiann Smithwick Instagram – This is an incredible fossil of a 48 million year old bird feather from the Eocene age Messel Formation of Germany. This location has some of the best-preserved fossils in the world, many of which include soft tissues like these feathers.
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The feathers are preserved because the original pigment that gave them colour in life is very resistant to decay, and under the right conditions (no oxygen) can remain long enough to be preserved in the rock after the other tissues (keratin) have decayed.
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The pigment isn’t the same colour that it would have been in life though. That changes as the rock heats up under pressure underground and chemical changes occur. The colours that it is now are caused by trace metals that bind too the pigment from the sediment.
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If you swipe along, you’ll see scanning electron microscope (SEM) images I took of the pigment granules (melanosomes) inside the feather for my PhD. These are tiny, you could fit 1000 of them end to end in a millimetre!
#fossil #fossils #art #geology #palaeontology #paleontology #paleo #curiosity #ancient #history #collect #collection #animal #animals #evolution #science #museum #jewel #collecting #treasure #feather #feathers #bird #birds #messel #pigment #eocene | Posted on 12/Jun/2022 23:49:00