
An ancient Chinese bird kept its feathers, and colors, for 130M years - Jaruzel
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/22/this-ancient-chinese-bird-kept-its-feathers-and-colors-for-130-million-years/
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nullnilvoid
130M years is a long time. What kept the protein for such a long time?

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tomcam
Sadly, 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.

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T-zex
Why is this bird Chinese? Humans did not exist back then.

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in_the_sticks
How else would you suggest they describe where in the world it was found?

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zakki
Ancient bird found in China?

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PeterWhittaker
Funny, 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.

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theodorejb
How do they know it is 130 million years old?

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thecopy
Carbon dating, presumably.

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muricula
Carbon 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has been replaced by different minerals.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)

