THE dinosaur Microraptor looked more like a raven than a scaly reptile: a new fossil shows that its feathers were dark and iridescent.
Matthew Shawkey at the University of Akron in Ohio and colleagues trained a scanning electron microscope on the fossil’s feathers and found tiny structures called melanosomes, which contained dark pigment. The melanosomes’ shape and arrangement are similar to that seen in iridescent birds (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1213780).
Feathers may have evolved as much for display as for insulation before being adapted for flight – although the blind golden mole also has an iridescent coat, suggesting iridescence need…
