The Luckiest Accident in Paleontology

So today I learned the discovery of feathered dinosaurs basically came down to luck on a geologic scale

Volcanoes near ancient lakebeds in what’s now Liaoning, China kept erupting at just the right size, in just the right place, with just the right ash chemistry, to bury dinosaurs in oxygen-free mud before they could decompose. This gave us Sinosauropteryx, Caudipteryx, Microraptor and other hundreds of species preserved down to individual feather barbs, pigment and even what they last ate.

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