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Dinosaur's Coloring Helped It Hide in Forest


Claire.

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Dinosaur's Dark Coloring Helped It Hide in the Shadowy Forest

Tiny fossil clues left behind on an early Cretaceous-era dinosaur have revealed the dinosaur's original coloring, a new study finds. The 120-million-year-old dinosaur, a Triceratops relative known as Psittacosaurus, had a dark-colored backside and a light underside, along with a splash of spots and stripes on its body, including its back legs, the researchers said.

This dark-on-top, light-on-bottom coloring scheme, known as countershading, is common among modern animals today, the researchers said. Creatures with countershading can use their coloring as camouflage when they're in a shadowy area, such as a forest.

Read more: Live Science

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Perhaps the chameleons and anoles are the remnants of these critters.

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3 hours ago, paperdyer said:

Perhaps the chameleons and anoles are the remnants of these critters.

No, those two are squamates, a completely different group. The survivors of Psittacosaurus' group which is the Archosaurs are the birds and the crocodilians. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/20/2016 at 1:21 AM, oldrover said:

No, those two are squamates, a completely different group. The survivors of Psittacosaurus' group which is the Archosaurs are the birds and the crocodilians. 

That's right.

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