By [UPDATE: NYT LINK ADDED] VICTORIA GILL - BBC
Added: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 UTC

Thanks to panex for the link.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8481448.stm

Meet Sinosauropteryx, a very spiky little dinosaur.

A team of scientists from China and the UK has now revealed that the bristles of this 125 million-year-old dinosaur were in fact ginger-coloured feathers.

The researchers say that the diminutive carnivore had a "Mohican" of feathers running along its head and back. It also had a striped tail.

The team revealed details of the dinosaur's coloured feathers in an article published on Nature's website.

The team began by studying the fossilised remains of a bird, Confuciusornis, which also lived during the early cretaceous period.

Confuciusornis' featherswere preserved in extraordinarily complete fossils that were recently discovered in northern China.

Using a powerful electron microscope to look inside the feathers, researchers were able to see microscopic structures called melanosomes, which, in life, contain the pigment melanin.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8481448.stm
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[UPDATE 27-Jan: NYT link added]
Thanks to Catalin for the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/science/28dino.html

Study Offers an Insight Into Dinosaur Colors

Carl Zimmer
What color were dinosaurs? Well, at least one of them had a feathered mohawk tail in a subdued palette of chestnut and white stripes.

That is what a team of Chinese and British scientists reported on Wednesday in Nature, providing the first clear evidence of dinosaur colors from studies of 125-million-year-old fossils of a dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx.

“We might be able to start painting a picture in color of what these things looked like,” said Lawrence M. Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University, who was not involved in the study.

Of course, such pictures have been painted many times, but the colors were products of a painter’s imagination, not a scientist’s laboratory.

Dinosaur fossils are mostly drab collections of mineralized bones. A few preserve traces of skin, and fewer still preserve structures that many scientists have argued are feathers.
...
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/science/28dino.html

TAGGED: BIOLOGY, EVOLUTION, PALEONTOLOGY

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