This is the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.
Look at the eyes, the teeth.
Hear the roar. It's terrifying.
But what if I told you Spielberg got it wrong.
T-Rexes weren't dark and drab.
T-Rexes may have been as bright as parrots.
How do we know?
Well, new research is causing a big shift in how we picture dinosaurs.
I think people would be really surprised if they see some of the colors
and the look of what a modern view of Tyrannosaurus Rex would be.
Let's start digging. Hey, everyone.
I'm Patrick Jones, and welcome to Cheddar Explores.
The first step in building a picture of a dinosaur is finding their remains.
We don't have anything unless we find their bones,
and we still do it the old way.
Really that the way that we look for these things hasn't changed in the last 150 years.
Propelling intelligence don't just dig at random,
dinosaur bones are often found at the surface.
The bones are then carefully removed and brought back to the lab.
At that point, it's like a puzzle
without having the picture on the front of the box to help.
Mark shared that at most digs,
you'll typically find 10 percent of an animal more or less.
On top of that,
of the 1,200 species of non-avian dinosaurs discovered,
most depictions are based on only one individual fine.
In order to paint a complete picture for these animals,
there are a lot of gaps to fill in.
We have two ways of filling in those gaps.
The first is through technology.
Scientists are able to use
CAT scan radiation and synchrotron radiation to look inside fossilized bones.
Then, with the help of a computer,
scientists can draw the muscles that were once attach.
That would give you a better idea of what the dinosaur looked like and how it moved.
Our second method of determining what a dinosaur look like is common ancestors.
We now know dinosaurs are closely related to crocodiles and birds.
The connections between dinosaurs and birds can be overstated.
Birds are just as much a type of dinosaur as humans are a primate.
So, we can study birds and we can understand a lot
of things about both dinosaur behavior,
dinosaur appearance, dinosaur physiology,
and just their biology in general.
Meaning, a raptor was less this,
and more like a flightless version of this.
The close relationship between dinosaurs and
birds is why scientists think that feathers are prevalent feature in dinosaurs.
Feathers were found in common ancestors of both dinosaurs and birds,
meaning every creature along that branch of
the evolutionary tree has had access to that trait.
It's a similar rationale for like Australopithecus like early humans.
Nobody's ever found hair on a fossil of like Lucy or anything like that.
But chimps have hair and we have hair,
and we're descended from the same from an ancestor.
Hair didn't evolve twice.
So, we would predict that those animals would have had hair as well.
Dinosaurs close relation to birds also tells us
the dinosaurs were brighter in appearance than we thought.
So, why is that the case?
Well, let's look at mammals.
Mammals are pretty drab.
I mean that they're brown,
they're black, and that kind of thing.
A lot of that has to do is that mammals don't see in color.
Of course, there are a few exceptions like gorillas, chimps, and us,
but the point is many mammals are drab because there's less of an incentive to be bright.
Mammals across the spectrum champions smell,
whereas birds prioritize sight.
Not only are birds brilliantly colored,
they're more brilliantly colored than we think because we just can't see it.
Birds can see way into the ultraviolet.
That helps them with camouflage and choosing a mate.
The same goes for another living relative of dinosaurs, the reptile.
The theory is because birds and reptiles can see in color, so could dinosaurs.
But there's even more technical evidence than that.
There are organelles in most animals called "melanosomes."
What they do is store and transport melanin,
which is the most common light absorbing pigment in the animal kingdom.
The shape of an animal's melanosomes determines what color that animal will be.
Now, when we find dinosaur remains,
scientists can study the shape of these organelles and compare
those results against what we know about animals today like birds.
This finding shows that dinosaurs are brighter than scientists thought.
So, how do we know what dinosaurs look like?
Well, because we know what birds look like.
By the way, in case you're wondering what
a dinosaur expert thinks about when watching Jurassic Park.
Oh, really nothing because I don't see them.
But I have no problem with however they want to depict them.
It's not supposed to be a documentary.
It's not supposed to be scientifically accurate.
It's supposed to be entertaining.
And people find it entertaining,
go for it, because I really don't care if it's scientifically accurate.
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