Last week, a study found that an early dinosaur had a red mohawk and striped tail, one of the first pieces of solid evidence regarding dinosaur coloration. But a new study forthcoming in Science goes one step further, mapping in full 3D the strange plumage of the earliest-known feathered dinosaur, Anchiornis huxleyi. Richard O. Prum, leader of the new study, was among the first to document that pigment-giving structures called melanosomes could survive fossilized for millions of years.
The shape and arrangement of melanosomes help produce the color of feathers, so the scientists were able to get clues about the color of fossil feathers from their melanosomes alone [The New York Times]
. British and Chinese scientists used this technique to release last week's color study of the 125-million-year-old Sinosauropteryx, and Prum's team applied it to the 150-million-year-old Anchiornis. Because the feathers of Anchiornis (which lived in what is now ...
