Now it’s possible to illustrate what some dinosaurs looked like without having to guess. For the first time, researchers have revealed the true colors of dinosaur feathers.
Jackson School of Geosciences Paleontologist Julia Clarke, along with a team of researchers, mapped out the colors and color patterns of an entire dinosaur from head to tail. They picked up color patterns not just across whole regions of feathers but also within individual feathers. The dinosaur in question is a 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi discovered in China. It was the size of a chicken and, as the new study reveals, had black and white stripes and splotches with a rusty red crown.
The team’s research findings were published in this week’s issue of Science.
Continue reading this article on the Jackson School of Geosciences’ Web site.
Image credit: Michael DiGiorgio/Courtesy Yale
