what colour were dinosaurs? well a X ray team led by led by Dr Roy Wogelius, Dr Phil Manning and Dr Uwe Bergmann, took the unique approach of using the synchrotron to analyse the soft tissue regions of fossil organisms, the application of X-ray physics to palaeontology has shed new light on the tangled tale of prehistoric pigments in deep time and how to recognise its chemistry in fossils that are hundreds of millions years old,
Dr Wogelius, lead author on the paper and University of Manchester geochemist, said, 'every once in a while we are lucky enough to discover something new, something that nobody has ever seen before, for me, learning that copper can be mapped to reveal astonishing details about colour in animals that are over 100 million years old is simply amazing, but even more amazing is to realize that such biological pigments, which we still manufacture within our own bodies, can now be studied throughout the fossil record, probably back much further than the 120 million years we show in this publication,'
the report in Science magazine is called, Trace Metals as Biomarkers for Eumelanin Pigment in the Fossil Record, to unlock the stunning colour patterns, the Manchester researchers teamed up with scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (USA) and used the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource to bathe fossils in intense synchrotron X-rays, so there you have it some time soon we shall see our favorite dinosaurs in their natural colours, I wonder what surprises there will be, a pink Tyrannosaurus rex?
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