In a new study, researchers from the University of Bristol and Virginia Tech have used the fossils of the two species of bats, Palaeochiropteryx and Hassianycteris, to determine the color of dinosaurs, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
For the study, the researchers studied the two species of bats who lived 300 million to 20 million years ago.
The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For the research, scientists from the University of Bristol and Virginia Tech examined the melanosome structures that were preserved in the bat fossils.
Contrary to the views earlier held by scientists that melansomes were just bacteria, Molecular paleobiologist Jakob Vinther of Britian's University of Bristol and his team have confirmed that the structures contained melansome remnants, not bacteria.
Melansomes contain melanin, the pigment that gives certain colors to skin, fur or hair. Therefore, scientists can use the size and shape of melanins to determine their original color.
"This means that the correlation of melanin colour to shape is an ancient invention, which we can use to easily determine colour from fossils by simply looking at the melanosomes shape," Dr. Vinther explained in a University of Bristol press release.
"People had questioned whether you could use the shape of the melanosome to tell anything about the color, because it's been through a lot. Millions of years in the ground is obviously going to take a toll," Cailtin Colleary, a Ph.D. student in geological studies at Virginia Tech University and the study's lead author told The Atlantic.
"So by finding traces of the chemical melanin in association with these structures, we've basically confirmed that you can use the shapes of the melanosomes themselves to tell what color something was," she said.
With the examination of the fossils, the researchers have come to the conclusion that dinosaurs were brown in color.
"Since so little is preserved in the fossil record, the color of extinct animals has always been left up to artists' interpretations, and important information regarding behavior has been considered inaccessible," Ms. Colleary told Reuters.
An animal's color can provide clues to the environment the animals lived in, how they attracted mates, or how they protected themselves against predators.
"I think we're just scratching the surface in our ability to extract information like this from the fossil record," adds Colleary. "As technology continues to advance, we'll keep finding information in fossils that we don't even know is there today."
