An illustration of Borealopelta markmitchelli. The study suggests that it displayed a camouflage effect known as counter-shading. Illustration: Julius Csotonyi/Courtesy of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Drumheller, Canada.
The Guardian has a story about a recent paper that studied coloring in the best-preserved armoured dinosaur ever discovered. The specimen of Ankylosaur named Borealopelta markmitchelli, was discovered back in 2011 at the Suncor Millennium Mine in Canada. The discovery was a surprise as the site had previously only revealed fossils of ancient marine reptiles. The animal was about 18 feet long and lived about 110 million years ago. It was unveiled back in May 2017 and is currently on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada.
This study looked at the preserved "skin" and determined that it was camouflaged in red and white using an effect called "counter-shading". This effect is seen in modern animals, like the gazelle, and is thought to evolve quickly.
The original paper was in Current Biology.
“It had this dense armour on its back – it would have looked almost like a pineapple, with dense angular horns,” said Jakob Vinther, a molecular palaeobiologist and co-author of the latest study from the University of Bristol, adding that it is likely the creature’s tail was covered in spikes. “On its neck and over its shoulders it had extremely long horns; even the face was covered in armour,” he said.
Now researchers say analysis of the thin film of organic material has yielded an intriguing discovery: the dinosaur was ginger on top.
“We could see that the organic compounds [in the film] were something that contained carbon, nitrogen and sulphur – that is something that we know is typical for [the pigment] red melanin,” said Vinther.
It’s far from the first time that a dinosaur has been found to have a reddish hue, but the team says the fact that the belly of beast showed no sign of the film means that it was most likely pale underneath and only russet-coloured on the upper side.
