Posted on 04/25/2022 12:04:12 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Once you know the shape of the melanosomes in a fossil, you can learn all sorts of things about the animal. For example, some dinosaurs with fearsome reputations were incredibly showy.
"Many of the close relatives of Velociraptor — you know, that was chasing the kids around in the kitchen [in "Jurassic Park"]?" Vinther said. "First of all, that was covered in feathers. It was really bird-like, not like this naked thing that we see there. But furthermore, most of the relatives that we looked at that were close to it, they were iridescent. So they would have had a metallic sheen, like hummingbirds or peacocks."
Other dinosaurs had complex camouflage. The first dinosaur Vinther ever studied was a small, bird-like animal called Anchiornis. Based on the melanosomes, Vinther and his team concluded that it had a gray body, white wing feathers with black splotches at the tips and a red crown like a woodpecker's.
Another dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx — the first dinosaur to be discovered with feathers — had a striped tail and a bandit mask, sort of like a raccoon. It also had countershading, a kind of natural camouflage in which the parts of an animal that would usually be in shadow have a lighter pigment than the parts that would usually be in sunlight. A classic example of this is the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), which has a white belly and a brown backside.
This coloring tells scientists about the creatures' habitat; if the countershading is sharp and high on the body, as it was in Sinosauropteryx, the animal probably lives out in the open. Countershading that's more gradual and low on the body suggests a forest environment where the light is more diffuse.
Camouflage also distinguishes predators from prey.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
That would be the Woposaurus. I am so dead for that
Contrary to popular belief the Limey pterosaurs were not lime green, they were paisley...
Nice!
I’ve seen a purple one on TV. He was cool, and liked kids.
#21 So did actor Tim Allen : )
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.