Feathers and other intact soft tissue samples found in some of the fossils even helped prove that modern birds almost certainly descended from dinosaurs . Until now, scientists largely attributed the unique preservation of these fossils to a series of sudden,

Between about 120 million and 130 million years ago, during the age of dinosaurs, temperate forests and lakes hosted a lively ecosystem in what is now northeast China. Diverse fossils from that time remained pretty much undisturbed until the 1980s,

Some of the most famous and best-preserved dinosaur fossils were thought to have been suspended in time due to a massive volcanic event like the Mt. Vesuvius eruption that literally froze Pompeii in stone.

Today, this ancient ecosystem, preserved in the Yixian Formation, offers some of the world’s most exceptional fossil specimens. For decades, scientists believed the preservation of these fossils was due to volcanic eruptions.