In 2016, a Montana researcher found a rock; scans later revealed a dinosaur's finest feather

David DeMar Jr., a researcher with the University of Washington's Burke Museum, discovered the unusual nodule while conducting fieldwork in northeastern Montana's Hell Creek Formation. Sometimes, the most extraordinary discoveries are hiding in things that look utterly ordinary. In 2016, a researcher working in Montana spotted a small, reddish-brown rock while searching for fossils. It was about half the size of a golf ball, hardly the kind of object that would seem destined for a major scientific discovery, states a study published by Science Daily. But a closer look revealed a tiny fossil feather on its surface. A decade later, advanced scans showed that the rock held a much bigger story: it was fossilized dinosaur dung containing remarkably preserved feathers, bones and scales, including what researchers describe as the finest feather specimen yet discovered from the age of dinosaurs. Scroll down to read the details.A 66-million-year-old findThe coprolite, or fossilized feces, dates to roughly 66 million years ago, near the end of the Cretaceous Period. Inside, researchers found several feathers along with tiny fish scales and leg bones belonging to a hesperornithiform, an extin...