What colour was a T. rex or a pterodactyl? Are you sure? Well, we could soon be. Enormous prehistoric reptiles have captured the imagination of generations, and inspired thousands of books, films and television series. Dinosaurs have become so commonplace, it is easy to forget that our only clues about their appearance lie in a few bones and imprints in rocks. Traditional physical examination of fossils can unearth many details about their shape and size, but colour, it seemed, was lost to the ages. We had nothing but the guesswork of artists and film makers. Now, science is filling in the blanks.
For years, debate has raged over whether microscopic traces found in fossils are melanosomes (organelles containing the pigment melanin) or simply similarly shaped bacteria. To answer the question once and for all, the fossil traces had to be examined chemically. Researchers analysed samples from the fossilised feathers of a bird-like dinosaur from China, Anchiornis huxleyi, using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry and infrared reflectance spectroscopy.
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