A remarkable exhibition of 'dinobirds' arrives in Belfast for a limited visit to the Ulster Museum. Dick Ahlstrom describes what will be on show.
The Ulster Museum plays host from later this month to the world's best collection of feathered dinosaurs when a unique travelling exhibition reaches us. It will include some of the latest fossilised "dinobirds" yet discovered, one so new it still hasn't been formally named.
"They come from a place in northern China called Liaoning Province and they have all been discovered in the last 10 years," says Dr Peter Crother, keeper of geology at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. "Most of the discoveries have been made by local people."
For more than 140 years, scientists argued that modern birds evolved from the dinosaurs but the proof remained elusive. Archaeopteryx, discovered in Germany in 1861, ranked as the most ancient bird known to palaeontologists, but it was not until the Liaoning discoveries that a substantial body of evidence for the bird-dinosaur connection began to emerge.
These finds represent the "missing link" that helped fill in the gaps that could not otherwise be bridged. "It is a unique window onto the past," says Dr Crother, and one that has only just opened.
"The most spectacular of the intermediates hasn't even been given a name," he adds, a reference to an animal that has been dubbed, "fuzzy raptor". Discovered in 2002 by local farmers, fuzzy raptor is the skeleton of a predatory dinosaur, but is fringed with a coat of feathers.
The museum pulled off something of a coup in securing the exhibition, which is on loan from the British Museum in London. The travelling exhibition includes the original 124-million-year-old fuzzy raptor fossil and 12 other dinobirds on loan from the Geological Museum of China.
The exhibition's five-year programme first brought it to London and most recently to Edinburgh. "We now have been able to jump in and fill a gap in their travelling schedule," says Dr Crother. "We are very pleased to have grabbed the opportunity."
The presentation delivers a cohesive explanation of how birds gradually evolved from the dinosaurs, says Dr Crother. Uniquely, the Liaoning fossils include both ancient birds and feathered dinosaurs so the transition is easily seen. Some of the precious fossils represent the only known example of a given species and the show includes explanatory displays and artist's impressions showing how the living animal might have looked.
The intermediate dinos weren't the giant tyrannosaurs but meat-eating creatures about the size of a modern chicken. "They are small dinosaurs with feathered coverings which would normally not have been preserved. Because of the special conditions associated with these rocks, some of the soft tissues have been saved as well," says Crother.
Normally only bones and teeth survive to become fossils, but these fossils have their feathers intact. "These animals were overcome by an ashfall from a nearly volcano." They were washed into a lake and falling ash quickly covered them up, leaving them "entombed in a matter of hours", he says. This prevented their being reached by predators and also slowed their decomposition.
"That combination of conditions means for once you get an awful lot more preserved than you would otherwise expect," says Dr Crother. The animals and their feathers are readily seen in the split stone fossils, visible in two dimensions on the fossil surface.
Entitled, Feathered Fossils from China, the exhibition will run at the Ulster Museum from January 30th to May 3rd. Access to the Museum is free and further information on the exhibition and the museum's other displays is available at www.ulstermuseum.org.uk and 04890-383131.