Scientists find blue colour in ancient fossilised feathers
It could lead to a whole new appreciation of what prehistoric birds looked like.
(Web Desk) – For the first time, scientists have found a blue-feathered bird in the fossil record, thanks to a new discovery that lets us tell which fossilised pigments are, in fact, blue.
After millions of years of fossilisation, feathers are long gone, but melanin pigment packages called melanosomes can be preserved – up until now the problem has been telling blacks, browns, greys and blues apart, but experts have now been able to spot the difference.
It could lead to a whole new appreciation of what prehistoric birds looked like, including the Eocoracias brachyptera species that was the subject of this particular research.
"We have discovered that melanosomes in blue feathers have a distinct range in size from most of colour categories and we can, therefore, constrain which fossils may have been blue originally," says palaeontologist Frane Babarovi�
