Page 27 - Everything You Know About Dinosaurs is Wrong

Other dinosaurs, like CAUDIPTERYX, had more complicated feathers that looked like those of birds alive today, and even some huge predators, like Y U T Y R A N N U S , were covered in plumage (but they still would have looked scary)!
In fact, lots of dinosaurs, not just theropods like these, had feathers. Although we don’t think TRICERATOPS was fuzzy, we know that lots of its relatives, like KULINDADROMEUS, actually did have structures that looked a lot like simple feathers!
And were any dinosaurs actually green? By looking very, very closely at fossilised feathers, palaeontologists can tell what colour some dinosaurs really were!
ANCHIORNIS was a small dinosaur with white bars on its wings. It had a tall crest on top of its head which was a deep rusty-red colour.
The ‘rainbow dinosaur’ CAIHONG had very special kinds of feathers. They were iridescent, which means they looked like they were different colours depending on what angle you looked at them from.
SINOSAUROPTERYX had simple feathers that were a chestnut-brown colour. It had light stripes on its long tail and a dark pattern on its face, making it look like it wore a mask.
Modern-day birds can see a lot of colours, even some that humans can’t see. They use these colours to send signs to other birds like ‘stay away’ and ‘we should make a baby!’.
Dinosaurs could probably see colours in a similar way (including some ultraviolet colours that are invisible to humans), so animals like GIGANTORAPTOR may have used bright colours to ‘talk’ to each other too.
Some colours help animals blend into the background. This is called 'camouflage'. The fossilised skin of PSITTACOSAURUS showed microscopic clues to the
animals’ colour! It was mainly brown on top but paler underneath – like the fur
of squirrels or deer today. This means it would have been really difficult to see and could stay hidden if it lived in a wood or forest.
So scientists don’t ACTUALLY have any proof that dinosaurs were green and scaly. Instead, we now know that some dinosaurs were actually far more colourful - and feathery - than scientists had first thought!
23
x
o
y
t
r
r
e
t
r
p
o
i
t
d
n
u
a
a
g
C
s
u
n
n
a
y
t
u
Y
r
p
a
i
G