It Is The Question That Many Scientists Have Always Asked,

what colour in life were the animals and birds that we have the fossilised remains of?

well it appears that in this article in The Washington Post, they are one step closer to answering that question, the above species has been dubbed Eoconfuciusornis, which means “early Confucius bird.” and is approximately 130 million years and going directly to the question, what colour were those feathers when the bird was alive? to find out, scientists used a technique to analyse microscopic proteins that had never been used on fossils before, scientists studied Eoconfuciusornis beta-keratin buried deep within the animal’s fossilised feathers, they probed the keratin structures to find small, dark grains called melanosomes, these are the little specks within animal cells that give skin and other tissues its colour, although melanosomes had been discovered in fossilised creatures before, it was previously too difficult to tell if the dark granules belonged to the animal itself or ancient microorganisms preserved alongside it, work is continuing and who knows not only may we know the colour of Eoconfuciusornis when it was alive, but further research could mean that we will know the true colours of dinosaur as well, amazing!