Crichton and Spielberg might not be thrilled with the prospect of a total brush over of the twentieth century international hit Jurassic Park-films and novels alike-but to paleontologists Li Quanguo and Jakob Vinther, this was a once-in-a-lifetime discovery as compelling as winning the Oscars, because for the first time in history, scientists had decoded the full body colour patterns of a dinosaur, bringing dino colours from the realm of art into the realm of science.
The subject of the new study-the 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi-turned out to have looked something like a woodpecker the size of a chicken, with black-and-white spangled wings and a rusty red crown.
Dino-pecker: picture of Anchiornis huxleyi-the first dio to have its full body scientifically normal.
Fossil protofeathers of Anchiornis huxleyi preserved in an ochre-coloured slab of mudstone, discovered by the Li-Vinther team.
The subject of the Feb 4, 2010, science study-Anchiornis huxleyi.
Anchiornis's complicated pattern of reddish brown, black, grey and white feathers are quite similar to the silver-spangled Hamburg chicken, a domestic breed of ornamental chicken.
The new revelation was an one-ups from last week's announcement of the unearthing of fossilized melanosomes-pigments-bearing organelles-in the filament-like "protofeathers" of Sinosauropteryx. Add in the complementary findings of this nano-sized packeted pigments in the fossil bird feathers-a study reported by Vinther in 2008-and you could put to rest once and for all the long debate of dinosaurs' cognate with modern birds.
An artist's reconstruction using new data shows dinosaur Sinosauropteryx with striped tails and orange black feather.
Sinosauropteryx, a turkey-sized carnivorous dinosaur, is the first dinosaur-excluding birds-to have its colour scientifically established.
A model of Sinosauropteryx prima, a birdlike dinosaur with feathers.
An organelle containing the colour-associated pigment melanin, melanosomes were the stacked structures which gave modern birds their irisdescent feathers. The two most ubiquitous type of melanosomes were eumelanin, the rodlike pigment associated with black and grey feathers, and phaeomelanin, found in reddish brown to yellow feathers with a round shape. A lack of melanosomes made white. Ergo, by analysing melanosomes collected from various places on a single specimen, and comparing their sizes, densities, shapes and arrangements with those in the feathers of living birds-as was completed by the Anchiornis team-there you have it: a scientifically precise, fully-coloured rendering of a dinosaur.
Fossilised dinosaur Sinosauropteryx, showing its striped tail and fine hairlike filaments-their protofeathers.
A close examination of melanosomes, a subcellular structure that contain the pigment melanin.
Not surprisingly, a breakthrough as significant as this had set the wheel to scientifically colour dinosaurs in motion. Other contender against the Li-Vinther team (the Anchiornis team) in the race was a team led by Fucheng Zhang and Mike Benton (the Sinosauropteryx team). No doubt, it was an eye-opener-akin to going back in time and capturing a true dinosaur's picture close up, where one's childlike awe over teh mysterious beasts was sullied by the realization that they weren't magic after all.
For all the insatiable imaginations it had sparked, the discovery of true colours of dinosaurs posed questions we didn't even know how to ask. For starters, why feathers evolved in the first place? What role did colours play in the prehistoric life-camouflage, visual communication, sexual display or territoriality? How do these behaviours pertained to modern birds?
Two photos of Archaeopteryx dinosaur fossils, showing its overall birdlike shape (right) and a single feather (left).
The feathery scene created in the late 2000s shows what look like giant turkeys (the firaffe-sized oviraptor, Gigantoraptor) fucing off against a menacing meat-eater. This Lanzendorf Prize winning artwork shows how far paleoartist, Luis Rey has come in his depiction of birdlike dinosaurs.
In some ways, the story is just opening up, and we couldn't predict where it would be headed.
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