The New York Times has a story about an amazing, chance discovery. In 2016, a researcher in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana picked up a small rock that turned out to be a small piece of fossilized dinosaur dung. Fossilized dung is called a coprolite and this one had a “big” surprise. It had broke in half and revealed a tiny, well-preserved feather alongside fragments of avian bones. This was likely the leftovers from a bird’s final meal before being eaten.

An extremely well-preserved bird feather from the age of dinosaurs has been found inside a fossilized piece of dinosaur poop — revealing how some bird species may have escaped extinction.

It is, so far, the only example of a dinosaur-era feather found within rock that wasn’t completely flattened through the centuries, making it the best preserved feather of its type. The first-of-its-kind discovery was described in a study published Sept. 10 in Current Biology.

“When they found this specimen, they knew it was important,” said Jingmai O’Connor, a paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago who conducted the analysis of the feather once it was brought back to the museum’s lab.