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RIA of news. Spanish paleontologists reported finding two unique amber specimens in the province of Teruel. In one of them, scientists found dinosaur feathers, and in the other — the world's oldest mammalian hair.

The age of the finds is 105 and 110 million years, which corresponds to the early Cretaceous period. Cretaceous amber has been found in the province of Teruel before, but this is the first time that paleontologists have made discoveries of global significance here.

In one sample, three mammalian hairs with a characteristic pattern of microscopic scales were exceptionally well preserved. The parallel arrangement of the hairs and their identical proportions allow researchers to identify it as a small strand of hair from a single animal.

"The pattern on their surface is similar to that of current mammalian hair," the first author of the paper, Sergio Alvarez — Parra, said in a press release from the University of Barcelona. The authors note that this is the oldest find of mammalian hair in the world.

"The Arigno area is known for its vertebrate fossils, such as the dinosaurs Proa valdearinnoensis and Europelta carbonensis, but no one thought we would be able to find vertebrate parts in amber here," Alvarez continues.

Another sample, according to scientists, contains the feathers of the avian dinosaur Enantiornithes.

Both samples are interesting because their ancient resin captured parts of the hair and feathers of living creatures at the time of their contact with the sticky mass. The researchers observed a similar process on tar trees in Madagascar. Upon contact with them, animals and birds left hairs and feathers stuck to the resin.

"The peculiarity of the described process is that between the contact of the animal with the resin and the separation of parts of the cover, it must take quite a long time for the resin to solidify," explains another author of the study, Xavier Delclòs, Professor at the faculty of Earth Sciences and an employee Of the Institute for biodiversity research at the University of Barcelona.

The authors suggest that prolonged contact took place when the animals were sleeping on a tree that secreted resin, or leaning against it for a long time. Both specimens are currently preserved in the Aragon Paleontological Museum.

In addition to paleontologists from the University of Barcelona, their colleagues from the Institute of Geology and mining of Spain in Valencia and the Senckenberg Museum of natural history in Frankfurt in Germany participated in the study.

The article is published in the journal Scientific Reports

Image - аn amber specimen with mammalian hair from arine  © S. Alvarez Perez et al. Scientific Reports
Source: RIA of news, sci-dig.ru