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.
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.