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Paleontologists studying a 66-million-year-old feather preserved inside fossilized dinosaur excrement say the discovery could help explain why ancestors of modern birds survived the asteroid impact that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs. The feather came from a bird with more primitive, less insulating plumage than modern birds, suggesting that superior feather insulation may have been a key survival advantage during the resulting 'impact winter.' The find offers rare physical evidence connecting bird evolution to the extinction event, supporting theories that plumage quality was a decisive factor in which lineages endured the catastrophe.