Dinosaurs found in China had colorful, striped feathers, scientists declare

Some dinosaurs had russet-colored feathers, and one jazzy specimen had a Mohawk crest and stripes, researchers say in the first reports to confidently assign colors to dinosaurs.

In the new study, reported in the online edition of the journal Science, scientists focused on melanosomes, cell components that impart color. They were able to assign color to individual feathers and thus work out color patterns for the entire fossil of Anchiornis huxleyi, a small, feathered, two-legged dinosaur that lived roughly 150 million years ago. The animal weighed about four ounces and appears to have had a dark gray or black body and wings with some white feathers that gave it a stripe pattern, plus a reddish-brown crest and speckles on the face.

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