What color are the real dinosaurs, the answer is surprising

April 25, 2022 11:08 GMT+7

No animal has undergone a more spectacular makeover over the past few decades than the dinosaurs. Two questions that confuse many scientists are what color the dinosaurs really were and how do we know when this animal has been extinct for a long time.

What color are the dinosaurs?

By having to analyze and study many of today’s reptiles that are closely related to the dinosaurs, scientists speculate that the large herbivorous dinosaurs were gray and green, the main large carnivorous dinosaurs. mainly dark brown.

In 1996, paleontologists studying a dinosaur fossil from China discovered that this dinosaur had feathers. Then, the discovery of more and more long-haired dinosaurs made paleontologists pay more attention to their colors and make a completely different speculation. Dinosaurs had diverse colors like birds today.

Jakob Vinther, an associate professor of macroevolution at the University of Bristol, UK, has answers to both of the questions that initially puzzled him. Since the discovery of the first fossilized dinosaur feathers in 1996, scientists have noticed microscopic, circular structures inside them that are fossilized bacteria.

But Vinther realized that those structures could be something more. He spent a lot of time researching and discovered that the small round structure melanosomes, are tiny blobs of melanin, the pigment that gives color to the hair, skin, fur and eyes of the animal world.

Other scientists largely believed that pigments could not have existed during fossilization, but Vinther et al’s discovery not only showed that pigments did exist, but also demonstrated the actual colors of species. animals are extinct.

Large, large melanosomes indicate gray or blue pigmentation, while long and small, flat or hollow melanosomes indicate iridescence.

“By arranging melanin in a specific way inside dinosaur feathers create structures that interact with light. The flat or hollow shape of the individual melanosomes helps them fit together creating a metallic luster,” says Vinther. like a hummingbird or a peacock”.

Dinosaurs also had elaborate camouflage. The first dinosaur Vinther ever studied was a small bird-like animal, Anchiornis. Based on the melanosomes, Vinther and his team concluded that it had a gray body, white wing feathers with black spots on the tip, and a red woodpecker-like crown.

Sinosauropteryx, the first dinosaur discovered to have feathers, had a striped tail and a mask resembling a raccoon. It also has a special sun protection layer, parts that are in the dark have lighter pigmentation than parts that are normally exposed to sunlight.

Hoang Dung (synopsis)