Figure 8. SEM-EDS data derived from the brown, basal part of the fossil feather.

The six dominant elements (~93% of detected electrons) are presented in order of decreasing abundance by weight percent. See Table 1 for the quantitative data. Carbon is denoted with an asterisk because it was not auto-detected by the instrument and was manually inserted. Although this basal portion of the fossil is also dominated by Fe and C, as above, the quantitative data indicate the C is greatly decreased in abundance relative to the black portion.