Jim Robbins in the New York Times:
Vanya Gregor Rohwer slid open a drawer to display the rich pink spread wing of a roseate spoonbill, one of thousands of mounted wings at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates.
He pulled up a long flight feather to expose, at its base, a palm-tree shaped feather so minuscule it could easily be missed. For a long time, this tiny feature called a filoplume was indeed obscure.
“The history of research on filoplumes is not super robust. They are kind of an overlooked feather,” said Dr. Rohwer, a curator of birds and mammals at the museum. “They were considered a degenerate feather or a useless feather, a relic.”
No longer.
More here.
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