Louse on a dinosaur feather preserved in amber
That dinosaurs had feathers was an abstract idea to me until I began looking at images of these feathers preserved in fossilized tree sap—amber. I wrote earlier about the term, pterosphere. It means the ecology of the habitat on a bird within the feathers, like beetles and mites that eat and decompose skin and feathers—on the bird. Well, dinosaurs had them too! Amber specimens show encased feathers complete with associated mites and beetles.