CLUES FROM HUES: Thanks to some tough particles, researchers have found fossilized clues that hint, for the first time, at the color of dinosaurs and extinct birds. These Sinosauropteryx appear to have had rust-colored striped tails.
Image: CHUANG ZHAO AND LIDA XING
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For nearly two centuries, people have struggled to imagine what the great extinct dinosaurs looked like. Thanks to modern paleontology and physiology, their shapes, masses and even how they might have moved and interacted have been deduced. But one of the most basic questions about their appearance, their coloring, seemed unanswerable.
A new study, however, proposes some of the first cellular hints. Extrapolating from primitive pigment-giving organelles known as melanosomes (which contain the coloring compound melanin and are still prevalent in modern animals) that have been found in fossilized dinosaur feathers from the Cretaceous period, a research team paints a picture of dark wings and brightly striped reddish tails. The findings will be detailed in the January 28 issue of Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)
Using high-powered scanning electron microscopy, the researchers examined 125-million-year-old feathers found in the Jehol group, a geologic formation in northeastern China. One of the animals analyzed, the Sinosauropteryx, a small, meat-eating dinosaur, appears to have had alternating bands of dark and light along its tail. "In this case at least, the dark band was [a] russet, gingery color," Michael Benton, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol in England and co-author of the study, said in a press conference Tuesday in London. "It's the first time anybody has had evidence of original color."
A prevalent pigment
The discovery of this pigment in ancient dinosaur and bird feathers did not begin at a dinosaur dig, but rather in a lab studying fossilized squid. Jakob Vinther, now a PhD student in paleontology at Yale University who was not involved with the new study, was examining preserved ink sacs from Jurassic period squid when he found that the fossilized melanosomes appeared identical to those in modern-day squid ink.
The similarity led him to propose that "there must be melanosomes preserved in other kinds of structures" in other animals. "So I said, 'It would be interesting to look at bird feathers,'" he said in a phone conversation. In these fossilized feathers he saw the very same structures.
After bringing his findings to the attention of his graduate supervisor, Vinther was told that he had only found a common bacteria that had long been known to exist in these feather fossils. But he was not convinced. After studying feathers with a known color pattern, he found that the dark-pigment particles appeared only where the black bands did—and in the fossils they aligned perfectly with the individual feather filaments, an unlikely arrangement for bacteria. In 2008 Vinther and colleagues published a paper in Biology Letters describing the find, in which they proposed, "The discovery of preserved melanosomes opens up the possibility of interpreting the color of extinct birds and other dinosaurs."
It was no great stroke of luck that these pigment particles were still left in the fossilized feathers. In fact, they are what had been fossilized from the feather, says Vinther: "The reason that you have a fossil feather is because there are pigments. So if you have a white feather, it would not leave a fossil."
What does seem like good fortune, at least to the researchers studying these ancient particles, are their shapes. "We're extraordinarily lucky that each of the pigments of the melanosomes are contained in a different-shaped organelle," Benton said at the press briefing.
The melanosomes that have been found no longer exhibit their original colors because their chemical properties have changed in the intervening millions of years. But researchers can still ascertain the extinguished hues by looking at the particles' sizes and shapes, which correspond to those in living animals. Those that are sausage-shaped are black, and rounder; smaller ones are responsible for red, rusty tints.
Cautious coloring
Although Benton and his colleagues have proposed some specific coloration patterns, Vinther is not convinced that paleontologists are quite ready to pick up a paintbrush. It is not yet known how different coloring particles work in combination—and in their original structure in feathers—to create a perceivable hue. "We are getting much closer to putting colors on dinosaurs," he says, but we are not quite there yet. And although more fossil sampling will be necessary, he says, the real missing data has been right in front of us the whole time: "We need to know more about modern birds" because birds are living dinosaurs.
Benton and his team admitted that despite the artistic representations published alongside their paper, "We can't say for sure [these are] all the colors, because there are other coloring agents other than melanosomes that may not be preserved with the fossils," he said. "Melanin is quite a tough protein," Benton pointed out at the press conference. But other coloring particles might not have survived these millions of years. Artistic representations of extinct animals often borrow from extant animals, taking into account their habitat camouflaging as well as possible display characteristics, so, as Benton noted, artistic representations are "not completely fatuous."
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6 Comments
Add CommentOkay, but how were they at, say, POKER?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll bet they cheated!
"a common bacteria" in the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA common mistake; bacteria is plural. It should be "a common bacterium". You wouldn't write "a common dogs" would you?
It's nice to see colored pigmentation in dinosaurs confirmed, if only because it's what one would logically expect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPredator/prey gaming is the same whether mammals, fish or dinosaurs are the players. The most efficient tactic for any creature smaller than its predator is simple camouflage--break up the body outline. The same applies to any ambush predator same size or smaller than its prey. Birds seem to have carried their color perception from their dinosaur past, and this implies the hide-and-seek of prey v predator.
However, I would expect that the largest sauropods and other plant eaters (too big to hide, or even need to) were simply elephant-, or whale-, grey. Though the young were probably well-patterned to hide until they were too big to attack. It would be very interesting to see if traces of melanozomes can be detected in those rare fossil dino eggs that still have the embryo preserved inside.
There is also not only inherent pigment but the protein forms of the individual hairs of a feather create colour through diffractive affects of light and transmission so only part of the mystery can be solved. The rainbow affects as well as the apparent colour of a feather might be from selection absorption, transmission and relection along with pigments
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA good article in SciAm several years ago described bird and reptile vision; a wider and smoother spectrum, into near UV, than mammals like us can see. I've wondered if the coloration of bird feathers makes them look different to each other than they do to us --- that might explain the lack of apparent differences (to us) in coloration between the sexes of some species, e.g., penguins. That seems an anomaly considering the dimorphism of most birds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince modern birds and reptiles share that characteristic, one might guess that dinosaurs had it as well. The fossil record might eventually sort that out.
gripping story.....
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