Sunny steppes? A tiny parrot fossil suggests Siberia was once subtropical

The identification of a bone fragment from around 17 million years ago offers clues to both parrot evolution and a very different Siberian ecosystem

In vertebrate paleontology, complete bones are a luxury. More often than not, what ends up in front of paleontologists, are bits and pieces. The shaft of a long bone, a chunk of bone of something bigger, or a bone crushed under the weight of earth and time but held together by its rocky matrix. Those specimens are difficult, if not impossible, to identify, and many disheartening hours can be spent cataloging tiny bits of fossilized bone as nothing more than "bone indet."

However, paleontologists are trained to notice the smallest details, and every now and then, a certain bony bump or a barely discernible curvature of the bone surface catches your eye and makes you spin your mental bone Rolodex frantically thinking where you have seen that particular feature before.