Dinosaur Feather Color Discovered

anzha writes "Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were? For at least some, that's no longer true. Scientists working in the UK and China have closely examined the fossils of multiple theropods and actually found the colors and patterns that were present in the fossilized proto-feathers. So far, the answer is orange, black and white in banded and other patterns. The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead. If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period. And colorful!"

Comments

Summary hilariously wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA explicitly states that:

 

"... we cannot predict specific colors in fossils, maybe except black. So we are still far from putting colors on dinosaurs."

The "orange, white and black" colours are from an illustration at the top of an article, and a theory about a different dinosaur that definitely had stripes (possibly white and black ones.)

Is it only the sensationalist submissions that get through, or only the sensationalists who submit?

Re:Summary hilariously wrong

[BitZtream]

You must be new here.

If the post is from Timothy, you can pretty much assume the only correct part is the name of the person that submitted it, and in my experience, he gets that wrong too.

Re:Summary hilariously wrong

[BobMcD]

You cut that WAY too short:

But while Vinther is convinced by the melanosomes that Zhang has found, he's more skeptical about the inferences about colour. "Saying that Sinosauropteryx was rufous-red, based on one sample is a stretch," he says. We don't even know how melanosome distributions in modern birds lead to specific colours. "Without this knowledge quantified, we cannot predict specific colors in fossils, maybe except black. So we are still far from putting colors on dinosaurs."

Zhang feels we can, whereas Vinther is "more skeptical". So unless Zhang is a 'sensationalist submitter', your reading comprehension isn't so hot.

This part was further up:

Melanosomes are packed with melanins, pigments that range from drab blacks and greys to reddish-brown and yellow hues. Their presence in dinosaur filaments has allowed Fucheng Zhang to start piecing together the colours of these animals, millions of years after their extinction. For example, Zhang thinks that the small predator Sinosauropteryx had "chestnut to reddish-brown" stripes running down its tail and probably a similarly coloured crest down its back. Meanwhile, the early bird Confuciusornis had a variety of black, grey, red and brown hues, even within a single feather.

Its a good article. You should read it again.

Re:Summary hilariously wrong

[Rei]

Vinther also has a good point about feathers being capable of diffraction. For example, green parrots have no green pigment; the green is the result of the natural diffraction grating formed by the feathers. If you give a parrot a bath or shower, its green feathers turn a dark grayish brown. By only looking at the pigments, you'd think that a green parrot would actually be a dark grayish brown.

Still, it's very interesting work. Additionally, while it seems unlikely that we will ever be possible to 100% recreate a dinosaur, there are a lot of individual lines of data -- morphological characteristics, the DNA of their descendants, the remains of broken-down proteins in the fossils, microscopy of fossilized cells, etc -- that should allow us to come pretty close, as biological science continues to mature.

Re:Summary hilariously wrong

[Red Flayer]

Meanwhile, the early bird Confuciusornis had a variety of black, grey, red and brown hues, even within a single feather.

Confuciusornis say, man who guess dinosaur feather color knows dinosaurs ex-tint.

Yea right

[PieSquared]

"If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period."

Nobody out there not convinced by the existing lines of evidence proving birds are dinosaurs is going to be convinced by this. And don't kid yourself, there are lots of such people.

Re:Yea right

[Rei]

Well, diapsid reptiles.... but birds are diapsids, too. They just no longer fit into the class "Reptilia". Naming is somewhat of an arbitrary distinction.

For contrast, we're offshoots of synapsid "reptiles".

Re:Yea right

[ColdWetDog]

Time is an allusion.

Lunchtime doubly so.

Re:Yea right

[gyrogeerloose]

Apparently, there [b]are[/b] also a lot of people out there that can't keep their grammar straight when pointing out spelling mistakes.

Apparently, there are also a lot of people out there that don't know how to use HTML tags properly.

Earl Sinclair

[mcgrew]

Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were?

I remember being a kid and told a lot of things would never come to pass that did in fact come to pass.

Still don't know the real colors unfortunately.

[nloop]

Flamingo pink, canary yellow, "red factor" coloring. Lots of the brighter colors like those are diet based. That dinosaurs whites could be neon pink if it has the right diet!

Also, some of those melanosomes degrade chemically fairly quick and will never show in a fossil record.

Re:So everything really

[bill_mcgonigle]

tastes like dinosaurs?

My wife gets the kids dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets at the warehouse club. I've always thought that particularly poetic.

Birds are dinosaurs.

[Chris Burke]

The evidence and reasoning for birds being the modern descendants of the raptor-like dinosaurs is already pretty damn compelling. If that line of reasoning could have led us astray, then it's just as likely that this is just a case of parallel evolution where feathers and feather pigmentation were evolved separately by both dinosaurs and whatever the hell birds' actual ancestor's were.

I guess what I'm saying is that this is more about answering the question of how bird-like were the dinosaurs already or how early did bird-like features evolve, rather than piling more evidence on the dinosaur-bird connection.

Though I'll admit I'm biased, since that connection means my bird watching is a little less nerdy since it's actually dinosaur watching!

Wait... no, it's still just as nerdy.

I remember being told ...

[Korbeau]

Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were?

I remember being told that we could in theory breed dinosaurs in test tubes by extracting blood from mosquitoes preserved in amber ...

Re:Dinosaurs are green, doggone it!

[confused one]

Barney has always bothered me... Why are we teaching our children to play with a large and obviously dangerous carnivore?

Re:CHICKEN DANCE!

[harry666t]

You seem to be the dinosaur here.