BALO NEWS REPORT: A group of paleontologists has used a new scientific method to reconstitute the vibrant colors that adorned the plumage of a tiny dinosaur over 150 million years ago, a study said.
The researchers analyzed color-imparting structures called melanosomes in the fossil of a tiny feathered dinosaur and discovered the creature sported a gray body, a reddish-brown Mohawk crest and facial speckles, and white feathers with black-spangled tips on its wings and legs.
"This was no crow or sparrow, but a creature with a very notable plumage," said Richard Prum, a professor of ornithology, ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University and a co-author of the study, which appeared in the February 4 online edition of Science.
"This would be a very striking animal if it was alive today," he added.
The team of paleontologists analyzed the fossil of an Anchiornis huxleyi dinosaur, which lived in China in the late Jurassic period and, at just 12 centimeters tall, is the smallest dinosaur known to researchers.
The study examined 29 feather samples from the dinosaur and measured and located within them the granular-like structures called melanosomes that contain melanin -- a light-absorbing pigment in animals, including birds.
The team then compared the melanosomes in the dinosaur to those that impart certain colors in living birds, using existing data, which allowed them to discern with 90 percent certainty the colors of the petite creature.
The study found that the color pattern on the diminutive dinosaur's legs strongly resemble those found on the modern day Spangled Hamburg chicken, and believe the pattern served to help with communication and attracting mates, Prum said.
The work done by the scientists from Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Akron, Peking University and the Beijing Museum of Natural History, added weight to the theory that dinosaurs first evolved feathers for purposes other than flight.
"This means a color-patterning function -- for example camouflage or display -- must have had a key role in the early evolution of feathers in dinosaurs, and was just as important as evolving flight or improved aerodynamic function," said Julia Clarke, an associate paleontology professor at University of Texas at Austin.
In January, a study published in Britain's Nature journal used a similar technique to identify the bristles of a small carnivorous dinosaur, the Sinosauropteryx, that also lived in Liaoning Province some 125 million years ago.
To date, only two Anchiornis huxley fossils have been uncovered in China's Liaoning Province. Both were found last year.
During the 1990s, paleontologists working in the region uncovered numerous fossils of carnivorous bipeds believed to be the ancestors of modern birds.
