JURASSIC PARK for Real? Scientists Discover Dinosaur Tail (and Feathers!) Trapped in Amber

Looks like Westworld isn't the only Michael Crichton-related thing people will be talking about this week. In addition to the first season finale of the HBO series based on his movie, Crichton's Jurassic Park should get a fair amount of mentions in the wake of this news from CNN: scientists have discovered the tail of a 99 million-year-old dinosaur trapped in amber.

Xing Lida, a Chinese paleontologist found the specimen, the size of a dried apricot, at an amber market in northern Myanmar near the Chinese border.

The remarkable piece was destined to end up as a curiosity or piece of jewelry, with Burmese traders believing a plant fragment was trapped inside.

"I realized that the content was a vertebrate, probably theropod, rather than any plant," Xing told CNN.

"I was not sure that (the trader) really understood how important this specimen was, but he did not raise the price."

Sounds like Lida got a good deal!

Bird wings from dinosaur times have been found in amber before, but this is the first time anyone has seen part of a mummified dinosaur skeleton in those conditions. There's bad news for those hoping this discovery might mean we could see our own real-world take on Jurassic Park, though: no genetic material was preserved inside the specimen, so there's no chance of snagging any "dino DNA." But as that franchise has proven over and over again, that's probably for the best. Still — pretty cool find, huh?

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