Trapped in Time

(Enantiornithes Neonate)

Sleeping, dreaming,
never waking,
but found.
With outstretched wings.
I call to those who follow.

Ninety-nine million years old, a chiseled chunk of amber emerged from a Burmese mine in the hand of a local miner who risked life and limb mostly for the benefit of the mine’s owner. This mine and others like it in Burma, now Myanmar, remain the most dangerous in the world and that fact must temper the excitement of some collectors and scientists. Yet this global trade is immensely profitable and most specimens likely end up as curios and jewelry for those who can afford them.

Rock-encased fossils are generally compressed and misshapen. In contrast, amber is a sticky, viscous sap that oozes from damaged trees and surrounds whatever it encounters, often preserving inclusions in perfect condition. The process continues if the sticky glob falls from the tree, lands on moist forest floors, is washed to the sea where it settles into oxygen-less mud and remains for eons, until it is raised to the relative surface once again by tectonic forces. 

If this series of events seems improbable, it is. It accounts for the stone’s rarity and major deposits in only three locations: Myanmar, the Dominican Republic, and the Baltic regions of Europe.

Transcending the grizzly commercial trade and geological improbabilities, this particular chunk proved to be a phenomenon. It contained a nearly intact primitive hatchling of a distant ancestor to modern birds, Enantiornithes Neonate. It’s a variety still related closely to lizards, but baring toothed beaks. In this instance, the captured specimen was barely through its first molt, showing flight-ready wing primaries, still sheathed tail feathers, and elaborately scaled feet with predatory claws at the ready. When this fist-sized amber was first found in 2014, only those taloned feet were visible and thought to belong to some long past lizard. Luckily, this specimen made it to a laboratory where a CT-scan inspection revealed its true occupant. 

A National Geographic article told most of this story and displayed both pictures of the raw block of amber and an artist’s conception of the just hatched bird. Fascinated, I reimagined it in Trapped in Time.

(K. Romney, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/06/baby-bird-dinosaur-burmese-amber-fossil/)