Colors and markings of dinosaurs (and their feathers)

Why does this scream "CAPTION ME"?

Very cool article, Boss, thanks . . .

Ditto. And I agree with Seed, too -- that picture needs a New Yorker-type caption.

most dinosaurs did NOT have post orbital septa (that little wall behind the eye where, with the added stability to the eye, the increased masses of rods and cones are able to be collected and insure that color can actually be detected by these critters. Im not sure that anyone has done a structural analysis to determin e colr receptivity. Most dinos, with POS absent, would have a shaky eyeball and would only see things in ternms of movement and not within any sharp detain\l. Several raptors have POS's and we could make an argument for them seeing color , so they could have had enough time to have their "feather precurdors" serve some evolutionary purpose .

Id seen some really rad color sketches of guys like the "mini rex" displaying wild ass colors. However, I think mini rex didnt have a POS so Im not buyin this story entirely.

"CMON LARRY, WE'LL CATCH YOU, PROMISE"

"
HEY< ZAT A FIREBALL?? THIS AINT SUPPOSED TO BE THE CRETACEOUS YET"

The ability to register the colors doesn't mean that the colors weren't there. The sky would still have been blue. Plants would still have been green. Not all of a snake's predators can distinguish color, but lots of snakes are colorful.

I see a resemblance:



I wonder how dino legs fry up.

Kentucky Fried Raptor. Mmmmmmmmm....

The sky is blue due to pure physics and the refraction of the chemicals therein. Color is merely a spectrographic measure that is displayed in the visual spectra. Your argument doesnt hold water when you start bringing up things like spectra .

Flowers and angiosperm sex organs evolved in tandem with higher insect orders where color CAN be seen in the complex crystalline insect eye.

Some snakes DO have POS's and we infer that they see color. so the brightly hues xcrotalids and advanced elapids do have color schemes (look at a coral snale which is one qwith a POS).

Color, in order to be set in the genome (as we infer from fossils only) would have to serve some purpose, be it sexual display, camouflage, or intimidation. I wouldnt get too attached to the color thesis, its good but , when its proposed at some conference, a gazillion paleodudes and dudettes will tear him a new one . Its up to the proposer to back up his hypothesis with something besides cartoons.

Your next argument is gonna be that bird feathers are in man y cases highly colored. We know that birds have a GENERAL ability to distinguish some colors but thats based upon a complex system of irregularly arranged oil droplets and proto cones. Birds register better than humans for infrared and ultraviolet . So their response to color is one of a high contrast receptor. NOW dinosaurs have shown no evidence that they had feathers like birds so we dont know whether they had the Oil droplet arrangement in their retinae or what.
Bird color is usually seen as bright colors in high contrasts usually in males (in sexually dimorphic species) and in both males and females that have high color contrasts (in birds like raptors where there is no sexual dimorphism)

Interesting

I think you misunderstood my meaning. I'm saying that color could be incidental; shadings would have purpose, but the color used to achieve that shading could be arbitrary.

pheomelanin is responsible for the red browns, and is a derivative expression of the T in TCGA. So yes, it is inevitable (just like blue of the sky is the refractive expression of Nitrogen and oxygen) BUT, it rides with another series of genomic expressions and probably serves as a signal for some form of recognition by organisms who have it and others.

This isnt so much an AHA moment as its a recognition that , Alley Oop colorings of dinosaurs came from a more naive time.

It wud really be great if we cud travel back 66,000,000 years thru time
and videotape the flora n fauna of Earth frolicking around having fun
hither n thither, uphill n downdale in color n Hi Definition.

I guess thay did not give one another Christmas presents.
(Thay 'd have had a lot of trouble wrapping them.)

I bet that thay did not use fonetic spelling; see what happened to them.




David

The condition of travel back in time is that only your own personal corporeal self could be transmitted. All other items would be vaporized in the workings of the time machine. SO you would arrive into the Cretaceous, naked and weaponless. Could you make it Dave?

I dont think that , upon landing, youd give another thought to phonetic spelling for the rest of your brief life.

Yeah, I 'm too ugly for any of those predators to take an interest in me.





I gotta get one of the new de luxe models
wherein u can keep all of your stuff;
(including a well armored hang-out n plenty of good food n drink).

Maybe mount good cameras in low Earth orbit
(but in the de luxe models, only fonetic spelling works).