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(Phys.org) -- For millennia birds have been prized, even hunted, for their beautiful plumage but what makes their feathers so colorful? A new X-ray analysis of the structure of feathers from 230 bird ...

Vinther figured there was no reason pigment grains and melanosomes wouldn't survive in other fossilized creatures. He took a closer look at the suspicious dark smudges in an extinct bird fossil and ...

New research reveals that recently-described 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi, a woodpecker-like dinosaur the size of a modern-day domesticated chicken, had black-and-white spangled wings and a ...

Where do birds get their red feathers from? According to a new article, the red carotenoids that give the common crossbill its red coloration are produced in the liver, not the skin, as previously ...

In the world of birds, where fancy can be as fleeting as flight, the color of the bird apparently has a profound effect on more than just its image. A new study of barn swallows reveals it also ...

The news that many dinosaurs were likely covered in a thick layer of feathers may make them seem a little less imposing — but it also means they may have been intensely colorful. Now scientists have ...

What color was a Velociraptor? A little over 5 years ago, many thought paleontologists just could not answer that question. After all, there may be amazing fossils of carbonized feathers, but they don ...

Another week, another colorful feathered dinosaur. Hot on the heels of a recent report identifying pigments in fossilized dino feathers and filaments (SN Online: 1/27/10), a different team of ...