this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
233 points (97.9% liked)
tumblr
3333 readers
1 users here now
Welcome to /c/tumblr, a place for all your tumblr screenshots and news.
Our Rules:
-
Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.
-
Must be tumblr related. This one is kind of a given.
-
Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.
-
No unnecessary negativity. Just because you don't like a thing doesn't mean that you need to spend the entire comment section complaining about said thing. Just downvote and move on.
Sister Communities:
-
/c/[email protected] - Star Trek chat, memes and shitposts
-
/c/[email protected] - General memes
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How? I wanna know.
Okay, so I looked it up and as it turns out, yes, they think they can actually judge a dinosaur's color(s) based on fossilized melanosomes. Different shaped melanosomes correspond to different colors and "finishes" (iridescent, matte, glossy, etc), and they compare them with melanosomes from living animals to try and figure out what color(s) they might have had.
I highly recommend reading Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost Word by Michael Benton. It's written by one of the people who worked on this research, it's neatly explained (along with a ton of other interesting things from the history of paleontology), there are absolutely adorable illustrations and it's written with a great sense of humour.