Caihong juji

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Time: Late Jurassic (~161 million years ago)

Region: Hebei Province, China

Formation: Tiaojishan Formation (Yanliao Biota)

Coloration Data

In Hu et al. (2018), a melanosome analysis was conducted across 66 plumage regions of specimen PMoL-B00175. According to the study, most of the body was covered in dark, likely black feathers. However, the feathers on the head, neck, chest, and the base of the tail exhibited an iridescent metallic sheen, similar to the lustrous plumage of extant hummingbirds or crows. The study leaves out only the non-feathered parts of the body. The precise hue of the iridescence remains unknown, as it is determined not only by the morphology of the melanosomes, but also by their spatial arrangement and the potential presence of non-melanin pigments.

Method: Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and comparison against a database of extant bird melanosomes.

Publications

• Dongyu Hu, Julia A. Clarke, Chad M. Eliason, Rui Qiu, Quanguo Li, Matthew D. Shawkey, Cuilin Zhao, Liliana D'Alba, Jinkai Jiang, Xing Xu (2018)
  Research on the coloration of Caihong juji.
• Arindam Roy, Michael Pittman, Evan T. Saitta, Thomas G. Kaye, Xing Xu (2020)
  An overview article on the paleo‑coloration of amniotes.

Documents and files

• Hu_et_al._2018.pdf (PDF)
  Original article from Nature Communications.
• Roy_et_al_2020.pdf (PDF)
  Review article on amniote paleocolor in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

Reconstructions

Fossils

Size comparison