Indeed it is. A friend directs me to a recent paleontological discovery, as described in National Geographic by :
Two tiny wings entombed in amber reveal that plumage (the layering, patterning, coloring, and arrangement of feathers) seen in birds today already existed in at least some of their predecessors nearly a hundred million years ago.
A study of the mummified wings, published in the June 28 issue of Nature Communications and funded in part by the National Geographic Society’s Expeditions Council, indicated they most likely belonged to enantiornithes , a group of avian dinosaurs that became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period.
Anyone who grew up loving dinosaurs must be chortling in glee at this discovery. NG also supplies the context of acquiring the specimens:
Most fossils in Burmese amber come from mines in the Hukawng Valley in Kachin state, northern Myanmar. The valley is currently under the control of the Kachin Independence Army, which has been in intermittent conflict with the state for more than 50 years.
Due to the conflict, the mining and sale of Burmese amber is mostly unregulated, with the majority of the material sold to Chinese consumers who prize it for jewelry and decorative carvings.
Quadrangle Online supplies a photo:
Wow!
