Not just for the birds 
http://www.economist.com/node/21529008   
BY The Ecomomist

   Sep 17th 2011

This week I found a cool article in my dad’s Economist magazine about feathers in the science and technology section.   The article is about feathers in fossils recently found by Dr. Ryan McKellar in pieces of amber.  The feathers are about 70-85 million years old.  The scientists haven’t found out exactly where the feathers came from but they do know that a few of the feathers are not from birds.  Some of the feathers they found where not used for flying as you can see in the picture below.   Instead scientists think these feathers where used for keeping the prehistoric creature warm like a blanket.  Another way that the feathers may have been used is as water proofing to keep their skin dry.  Archaeopteryx is the first know bird that we as humans know of.   These feathers might have came from a creature that lived before the Archaeopteryx.   So scientists might have just uncovered a couple of new species they did not know about before.   

When I first saw this article, I loved the pictures of the unique feathers.  A t first I had no idea what they where because they don’t look like the feathers.  Today you see very different bird feathers. When I look at the feathers they look like plants to me and I do wonder why the so called feathers have color.  I would really like to go back in time to see what kind of animal the feathers came from.  In conclusion, I hope that we find out where these feathers came from.  I believe that we will someday in the future know what these birds looked like.