- Dinosaur colour
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Artist's impression of Anchiornis, illustrating feather arrangement and colors
Dinosaur colour is one of the mysteries surrounding the dinosaurs. However, recent studies of feathered dinosaurs were able to infer the colour of some of these long extinct reptiles.
Contents
Feathered dinosaurs
Main article : Feathered dinosaur
Anchiornis
In 2010 palaeontologists from USA, studied well preserved skeleton of Anchiornis, a troodontid from the Yixian Formation in China. In its well - preserved fossilized feathers, they found melanosomes - pigments that determine the colour. Different shaped melanosomes determine different colour. By analyzing shape of melanosomes, they understood, that Anchiornis had black, white and grey feathers all over its body. Only its head crest was red.
Sinosauropteryx, Confuciusornis, Caudipteryx and Sinornithosaurus
Dr. Mike Benton from University of Bristol[1], in 2010, analyzed remains of Sinosauropteryx, Confuciusornis, Caudipteryx,[2], and Sinornithosaurus from the Yixian, and also found melanosomes there.
He found, that Sinosauropteryx was covered in orange feathers(see link 1a). Its tail was striped.
References
- ^ Fucheng Zhang, Stuart L. Kearns, Patrick J. Orr, Michael J. Benton, Zhonghe Zhou, Diane Johnson, Xing Xu & Xiaolin Wang (2010). Fossilized melanosomes and the colour of Cretaceous dinosaurs and birds. journal Nature. ISBN ?.
- ^ Jakob Vinther, Derek E.G Briggs, Richard O Prum,and Vinodkumar Saranathan (2008). The colour of fossil feathers. The Royal Society. ISBN ?.
External links
Categories:- Dinosaurs
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