Dinosaur Files
How did they work out skin colour and voice of prehistoric creatures (say Dinosaurs)..?
By looking at bone fossils how did scientists come to know about skin texture (rough or smooth, hirsute or hairless, colour). I have read that they recently found partially mummified dinosaur with intact skin. I am not only asking abt dinosaurs but all prehistoric animals like giant sloth, saber tooth etc.
Public Comments
- For the dinosaurs, they are guessing. Basically, they're looking at the bone's function and similar reptiles. For example, a hand used for gripping will have a different texture than a foot used for walking. For some mammals, like the mammoth, they've found them frozen in ice.
- best guesses based on modern animals living in similar habitats.
- All those computerized documentaries on dinosaurs makes it look like we know quite a bit about them. The truth is, we usually just dig up bone fragments and they don’t come with a label and a Polaroid picture telling us when and how they lived and what they looked like. Most of it is guesswork. As Michael Lemonick (the senior science writer at Time Magazine) has said, “Paleontology is much like politics: passions run high, and it’s easy to draw very different conclusions from the same set of facts.” That is why they sometimes put the wrong head on the wrong dinosaur (like with the Brontosaurus). That is why they argue if the T. rex was a predator or a scavenger, and some are now suggested that there were T. rex that even ate plants as well. And that is why debate has raged about whether dinosaurs were warm or cold-blooded. It’s even difficult to tell whether a dinosaur is male or female from its bones.
