In a neat study lead by researchers from UK and China, melanin pigments from feathers of the Cretaceous period living dinosaur Sinosauropteryx are analysed with a scanning electron microscopy. Pigments in feathers are stored in organelles, and as luck has it these have different shapes depending on their colour. So even if the original colour of the pigment is since long gone in the studied fossils the original colour can still be estimated by comparing with the pigments of modern birds. The Sinosauropteryx seems to be red and white with a striped tail.
Copyright: Jim Robbins, Nature publishing group
As if it isn’t cool enough that 60 million years old animals can now be colour coded, the study also put two other questions to rest. The first is the controversy whether Sinosauropteryx really has feathers or if the structures found is something else, and with the discovery of neatly structured melanin pigments in close similarity to patterns found in both modern and early birds it gets a lot harder to figure out what this something else might be. The second is the question what the Sinosauropteryx used the feathers for – they were much too small for flight. The discovery of coloured pattern strongly suggest they were for display, and every biologist worth her salt can pull a handful of different evolutionary explanations for display from her hat at any given moment, starting with mating attraction, mating fighting and predator warnings.
Alina's comment:
Copyright: Alina Pete
Nature's news feature
The original article
Scientific American's news feature
No comments:
Post a Comment