Plumage Color Patterns of an Extinct Dinosaur

@article{Li2010PlumageCP,
  title={Plumage Color Patterns of an Extinct Dinosaur},
  author={Quanguo Li and Keqin Gao and Jakob Vinther and Matthew D. Shawkey and Julia A. Clarke and Liliana D’Alba and Qingjin Meng and Derek E. G. Briggs and Richard O. Prum},
  journal={Science},
  year={2010},
  volume={327},
  pages={1369 - 1372}
}
Dinosaur Plumage Coloration and appearance provide important behavioral and evolutionary information in animals. However, for the most part, we do not know the coloration of fossil terrestrial animals. Li et al. (p. 1369, published online 4 February) have reconstructed the appearance of a theropod dinosaur by mapping features of its well-preserved feathers and comparing them with modern samples from birds. Feather color is partly determined by melanosome density and shape, and this information… 
View on AAAS
doc.rero.ch
224 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
13
Background Citations
78
Methods Citations
11
Results Citations
4

224 Citations

Melanosome evolution indicates a key physiological shift within feathered dinosaurs

Inference of colour patterning in extinct dinosaurs has been based on the relationship between the morphology of melanin-containing organelles (melanosomes) and colour in extant bird feathers. When…

Reconstruction of Microraptor and the Evolution of Iridescent Plumage

TLDR
This finding and estimation of Microraptor feathering consistent with an ornamental function for the tail suggest a centrality for signaling in early evolution of plumage and feather color.

Fossilized Feathers

TLDR
The evolution of feather color, structure, and organization is gleaned from amber-preserved specimens and provides a glimpse of the color patterning in the feathers of ancient birds.

News Feature: Prehistoric animals, in living color

  • Amber Dance
  • Geography
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • 2016
TLDR
Suddenly, the color of prehistoric animals has become an active topic for research rather than speculation, turning Michael Benton into an optimist: “If you’re a scientist, never say anything is impossible,” he now tells students.

Elaborate plumage patterning in a Cretaceous bird

TLDR
The data show that even more elaborate plumage patterns than the spangles in Anchiornis and stripes in Sinosauropteryx were present at a relatively early stage of avian evolution, showing the significance of coloration and patterning to feather evolution.

Skin pigmentation provides evidence of convergent melanism in extinct marine reptiles

TLDR
This work presents direct chemical evidence of pigmentation in fossilized skin, from three distantly related marine reptiles: a leatherback turtle, a mosasaur and an ichthyosaur, and provides evidence of convergent melanism in three disparate lineages of secondarily aquatic tetrapods.

The plumage and colouration of an enantiornithine bird from the early cretaceous of china

TLDR
A new basal enantiornithine bird specimen recovered from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of Liaoning Province in northeastern China is described and data on skeletal ontogeny in the Bohaiornithidae is provided as well as evidence for intraspecific communication functions of plumage.

Foot scales in the Early Cretaceous bird Gansus yumenensis from China

TLDR
Results show that two types of scales, scutellate and interstitial scales, are preserved in IVPP V15077, which, in combination with previous discovery of scutate and reticulate scales in other Early Cretaceous birds, indicates that all four kinds of scales present in modern birds have appeared in the Early Cretsaceous.

Melanosome diversity and convergence in the evolution of iridescent avian feathers—Implications for paleocolor reconstruction

TLDR
It is found that iridescence is a labile trait that has evolved convergently in several lineages extending down to paravian theropods and is the most varied melanosome morphologies of all types of bird coloration sampled to date.

Reconstructing Carotenoid-Based and Structural Coloration in Fossil Skin

...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 15 REFERENCES

A new feathered maniraptoran dinosaur fossil that fills a morphological gap in avian origin

Recent fossil discoveries have substantially reduced the morphological gap between non-avian and avian dinosaurs, yet avians including Archaeopteryx differ from non-avian theropods in their limb…

A pre-Archaeopteryx troodontid theropod from China with long feathers on the metatarsus

TLDR
The extensive feathering of this specimen, particularly the attachment of long pennaceous feathers to the pes, sheds new light on the early evolution of feathers and demonstrates the complex distribution of skeletal and integumentary features close to the dinosaur–bird transition.

Structural coloration in a fossil feather

TLDR
Investigation of feathers from the famous Middle Eocene Messel Oil Shale near Darmstadt, Germany shows that they are preserved as arrays of fossilized melanosomes, the surrounding beta-keratin having degraded, the first evidence of preservation of a colour-producing nanostructure in a fossil feather.

Function and evolution

TLDR
A review of functional and non-functional hypotheses for female coloration in birds and a new evolutionary synthesis of bird color displays suggest that the function and evolution of color in young birds are similar.

Palaeontology: Leg feathers in an Early Cretaceous bird

TLDR
A fossil of an enantiornithine bird from the Early Cretaceous period in China that has substantial plumage feathers attached to its upper leg (tibiotarsus) may be remnants of earlier long, aerodynamic leg feathers, in keeping with the hypothesis that birds went through a four-winged stage during the evolution of flight.

A Basal Dromaeosaurid and Size Evolution Preceding Avian Flight

TLDR
Change in theropod body size leading to flight's origin was not unidirectional, and the two dinosaurian lineages most closely related to birds, dromaeosaurids and troodontids, underwent four independent events of gigantism, and in some lineages size increased by nearly three orders of magnitude.

Two feathered dinosaurs from northeastern China

TLDR
Two theropods from the Upper Jurassic/Lower Cretaceous Chaomidianzi Formation of Liaoning province, China are described, which represent stages in the evolution of birds from feathered, ground-living, bipedal dinosaurs.

Four-winged dinosaurs from China

TLDR
New evidence is provided suggesting that basal dromaeosaurid dinosaurs were four-winged animals and probably could glide, representing an intermediate stage towards the active, flapping-flight stage of proavians.

SCARE TACTICS IN A NEOTROPICAL WARBLER: WHITE TAIL FEATHERS ENHANCE FLUSH–PURSUIT FORAGING PERFORMANCE IN THE SLATE-THROATED REDSTART (MYIOBORUS MINIATUS)

TLDR
Experimental results indicate that white tail feathers are critically important in startling potential prey and raise questions about interspecific and intraspecific geographic variation in plumage pattern in the Myioborus redstarts.

A rare predator exploits prey escape behavior: the role of tail-fanning and plumage contrast in foraging of the painted redstart (Myioborus pictus)

TLDR
This is the first experimental study of morphological and behavioral adaptations of a rare predator that both elicits and exploits antipredator escape behavior of its prey against more common predators.