What colour were the dinosaurs? Feathers discovery gives clues [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

What colour were the dinosaurs? Feathers discovery gives clues

by Gordon Hunt
16 hours ago

The oldest fossil evidence of the red-orange hue of beta-keratin has been discovered in a 130-million-year-old basal bird.

International researchers are closing in on colour-coding the dinosaurs following the latest discovery of feather pigmentation from millions of years ago.

A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has reported the oldest fossil evidence of beta-keratin – a colour somewhere between red and orange – in feathers from a basal bird from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota.

The term ‘basal birds’ relates to species that are close to the base of the evolutionary chain, the earliest birds derived from dinosaurs named Paraves.

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