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BBC News - Science & Environment
June 9 (UPI) -- Scientists have discovered the remains of a Cretaceous-era baby bird inside a piece of 99-million-year-old amber. The amber fossil was found in Myanmar and purchased by scientists from local amber hunters.The baby bird became trapped in tree sap just a few days after hatching. The resin hardened into amber, preserving roughly roughly half of the tiny bird, including its neck bones, claws, a single wing and toothed jaws. It's the most complete Burmese amber fossil yet recovered.Scientists say the specimen belonged to a group of birds called Enantiornithes, which disappeared along with the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago."Enantiornithines are close relatives to modern birds, and in general, they would have looked very similar. However, this group of birds still had teeth ...
Mayflies live a day, humans live a century, if we're lucky, but what is the oldest living organism on the planet? For scientists, accurately proving the age of any long-lived species is a hard task.Under the boughs of a 300-year-old sweet chestnut tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, Tony Kirkham, head of the arboretum, confirms that trees are capable of outliving animals. Proving this can involve some traditional detective work, as he explains: "First of all we can look at previous records, to find out if a tree was growing there at a set date. Then we look at paintings and artwork, to look to see if that tree was present. And old ordinance survey maps quite clearly show ancient trees, especially important ones."A well-known way of measuring the age of a tree is by counting the rings...