3 ms·
The people who produce dinosaur illustrations don't seem to have as much of a problem with adding all sorts of details (extravagant plumage, wacky colors/patter
by kijin 10mo ago
The people who produce dinosaur illustrations don't seem to have as much of a problem with adding all sorts of details (extravagant plumage, wacky colors/patterns, starry eyes and acrobatic postures) that are neither directly supported nor contradicted by available evidence.
- RajT88 10mo agoWe are not dinosaurs, so have rather less skin in the game when it comes to accuracy.
- griffzhowl 10mo agoThey only started adding feathers after they found evidence of them being feathered, though. Plus there's zero direct evidence for their colours so there's no option but to use guesswork in these cases. And a lot of dinosaur reconstructions may be more for edutainment value rather than reflecting a scholarly best-guess. There's no uniform methodology across all these disciplines.
- bdr 10mo ago> Plus there's zero direct evidence for their colours This is no longer true! Starting with Sinosauropteryx in 2010, paleontologists have identified what they believe to be fossilized melanin-containing organelles. These organelles, called melanosomes, have different shapes depending on which color they produce, and those shapes are preserved well enough to be visible under an electron microscope.
- griffzhowl 10mo agoAmazing, thanks for pointing it out. In the meantime, there's been some rejigging of the classification so it's this related genus where they've found the melanosomes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huadanosaurus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huadanosaurus
- sdiupIGPWEfh 10mo agoIsn't a rather good deal of color from feathers a result of "structural color", rather than pigmentation? I'd be curious if fossilized feathers could ever, in theory, preserve enough microscopic detail to guess at that.