Chinese paleontologists have announced the discovery of dinosaur-era winged birds. The fossil nicknamed "angel" was found encased in Burmese amber and is believed to be a hundred million years old, the National Geographic reported.

Scientists have described this unique specimen as the nearest thing to finding the "flesh" of an ancient bird or bird-like creature. The remains are one of the first specimens to show the depth and details of feathers in wings of the enantiornithes, a species of extinct avian dinosaurs which are said to be the ancestors of modern birds, but had teeth and claws at the end of their wings.

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Dr. Xing Lida from the China University of Geo-sciences in Beijing, who headed the team of researchers, retrieved the rare specimen from northeastern Myanmar.

"We have skin, bones, claws, not only feathers. This provides us a unique opportunity to observe these animals frozen in time with a new level of detail," he told The Telegraph.

The preservation of the details of the feather has thrilled the scientists working on this project, who have described the amber as a sort of time capsule. Close examination of the plumage of the bird has revealed startling similarities between modern birds and the extinct breed.

"These specimens demonstrate that the plumage types associated with modern birds were present within single individuals of enantiornithes," a report of the study published in Nature Communications said

Amber, which is solidified tree resin, is commonly mined and sold as jewelery. In this case, the ancient creature would have been stuck in the sticky tree resin at the start of their fossilisation process which then would have encapsulated and preserved them till now.

The discovery had been groundbreaking in proving that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded like birds.

TagsDinosaurs, Dinosaur Fossils, Southern China Dinosaur, enantiornithes, Amber, Fossils, palaeontologist, palaeontology, myanmar amber, sleeping dinosaur, Myanmar, China Scientists, china