"not much larger than a common sparrow"

when we think of dinosaurs, we usually envision ginormous creatures lumbering (gentle giants) or crashing (colby) through life with their big bods. we do not think of feathered beings. well, once again, science has bitch-slapped us - this time with the knowledge that most dinosaurs had feathers. and although we have been hearing about this for years now, we still don't reallllllly picture it, do we?

make way for this new awesome thing, folks! it's called a dinosaur tail and it's real and it's stuck in amber* and it's feathered and it's perfect.

This beauty was found in an amber mine in myanmar in 2016. you can read the entire Economist article here.

what i love about this photograph is that challenges what we think we know and reminds us that we don't know shit. also, that this tail was once attached to a tiny, mini dino "not much larger than a common sparrow". take that, us.




* whenever i hear about things trapped forever in amber, i always think of  the book Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins. here's a sweet quote from it:

“Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.”