What Colour Were Dinosaurs?
Until recently, we knew nothing of the skin of dinosaurs. Depiction of their colour was left to the imagination of illustrators, who tended to go for a mixture of the green of lizards and the grey or murky brown of elephants and rhinos.
In 2009, however, that all changed when remnants of skin and ‘proto-feathers’ , actually hairlike filaments—sometimes called dino fuzz, were found on some dinosaur remains in China. The team identified fossilized melanosomes—pigment-bearing organelles—in the feathers and filament-like “protofeathers” of fossil birds and dinosaurs from northeastern China.
Among the fossil dinosaurs studied were several that were preserved with dino fuzz, such as the turkey-size carnivore Sinosauropteryx.
![](https://guernseydonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Sinosauropteryx.jpg)
Sinosauropteryx is the first fossil dinosaur to have its colour scientifically established
By searching for melanosomes and melanin not only in fossil feathers but also in other melanin-rich tissues, such as skin and hair, scientists, for the first time, won’t have to guess at the colours of extinct creatures.
These ‘proto-feathers’, and certain other features of dinosaur remains, have encouraged a belief that both skin and these ‘proto-feathers’ were part of the creature’s display mechanism to improve its breeding prospects.
Whether dinosaurs of the opposite sex liked bright colours is a matter for pure speculation, but at least the find has encouraged illustrators to open their palettes to a more striking and dazzling range in recent years!
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