Chapter 7: What Colour Were Dinosaurs?

The natural world is a colourful place—from the iridescence of a bird's feather, to the patterns on a butterfly's wing. These colours are formed by chemical and structural features at a microscopic level. Colour can play an important role in mating, fighting and camouflage—meaning that displaying colour can be the difference between life and death for many in the animal kingdom. Colours, such as the vibrant pink of a flamingo, can be altered by diet, and the iridescent sheen of a blackbird's feather can change depending on the angle at which it is looked at. But what about the colour of animals that no longer exist? We imagine scaly green dinosaurs, but what if this wasn't the case? What if there was evidence for a fuzzy, ginger dinosaur? Well… now there is! Palaeontologists have studied beautifully preserved fossils at a microscopic level and found tiny features that allow us, for the very first time, to accurately describe the colours of life that existed millions of year ago. This chapter explains how colours are formed in the world we see around us, as well as how things may have looked long, long ago.