The Color of this ‘Super Cute’ Dinosaur Decoded in New Research

Once upon a time in the early Cretaceous period, there lived a group of adorable herbivorous dinosaurs called Psittacosaurus. With turkey-scale dimensions, expressive beaked faces, and bristly tails, these animals were about as squee-inducing as dinosaurs could get.

What's more, the Psittacosaurus clan was extremely successful, and left an abundance of remains that has made it one of the most well-studied families in the fossil record.

But for all that paleontologists have learned about these diminutive plant-eaters, their coloration patterns have remained unknown—until now. New research published Thursday in the journal Current Biology has solved that mystery with the help of this exquisitely preserved Psittacosaurus specimen, which dates back 120 million years.

By studying the flattened carcass under an electron microscope, the study's authors, led by molecular paleobiologist Jakob Vinther of Bristol University, were able to identify patterns of "melanosomes," which are cellular carriers of the pigment melanin.

Melanin correlates with darker hues, so the team was able to use the distribution of melanosomes as a guide for reconstructing Psittacosaurus coloration.

READ MORE: What Color Were Dinosaur Feathers?

Vinther and his co-authors found that this animal sported darker brown colors on its back and lighter tones on its underside, in a basic camouflage pattern known as "countershading." With the help of paleoartist Bob Nicholls, the team was able to use these observations to construct a detailed 3D model of the specimen, hailed as "the most scientifically accurate life-size model of a dinosaur with its real color patterns," the authors say.

Cue the "Jurassic Park" theme, and imagine a herd of these little cutie pies in place of the brachiosaurus that Grant, Sattler, Malcolm, and Gennaro first encounter on their tour.

"Our model suggests it was super, super cute," Vinther told Reuters. "I think they would have made fantastic pets. They look a bit like E.T."

Melanosomes have already been used to determine the colors of small feathered dinosaurs, but this is the first time researchers experimented with a real model to try to determine what kind of environment might have selected these patterns.

This involved taking one of Nicholls's replicas on a field trip to the Bristol Botanical Garden to observe how different patterns of light would have interacted with its countershaded scales, which revealed that the dinosaur likely lived under dense forest cover.

"We predicted that the psittacosaur must have lived in a forest," Vinther said in a statement. "This demonstrates that fossil colour patterns can provide not only a better picture of what extinct animals looked like, but they can also give new clues about extinct ecologies and habitats. We were amazed to see how well these color patterns actually worked to camouflage this little dinosaur."

Surely, all of this provides enough creative ammo for a movie about some kid who befriends a time-displaced Psittacosaurus in the woods out back. But until that point, we'll have to make do with the reconstruction itself, which turned out to be as delightfully derpy as it is scientifically useful.

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