Scientists work out 'super cute' dino's camouflage pattern

An artist's illustration of Psittacosaurus, a 1.5m-tall herbivore that roamed thick forests in China about 120 million years ago.
An artist's illustration of Psittacosaurus, a 1.5m-tall herbivore that roamed thick forests in China about 120 million years ago. PHOTO: REUTERS

WASHINGTON • Scientists guided by small structures preserved in fossilised skin have deciphered the colour and camouflage pattern of a little dinosaur with a parrot-like beak and bristles on its tail that roamed thick forests in China about 120 million years ago.

Mainly brown, Psittacosaurus (pronounced sit-TAK-ah-sawr-us) had a paler underside on the tail and belly - a pattern called countershading that might have helped the 1.5m-tall bipedal plant-eater go unnoticed by hungry predators, the scientists said on Thursday.

It also had a heavily pigmented face, and hind legs that were striped on the inside and reticulated and spotted on the outside.

The colour pattern suggests that Psittacosaurus lived in a forest environment with diffuse light filtered through a dense canopy of trees, said the researchers.

Based on their findings, they created a life-sized, three-dimensional model in full colour.

"Our model suggests it was super, super cute. I think they would have made fantastic pets. They look a bit like ET," said molecular paleobiologist Jakob Vinther of the University of Bristol in Britain, referring to the friendly alien in the 1982 film ET The Extra-Terrestrial.

Psittacosaurus, meaning "parrot lizard", is one of the most thoroughly studied dinosaurs, with hundreds of individual fossils. It was roughly the size of a Labrador retriever, and was probably a common meal for Cretaceous Period predators such as its 9m-tall Tyrannosaurus Rex cousin, Yutyrannus.

"It was eaten by a lot of other animals," Dr Vinther said, noting that it must have quickly evolved optimal colour patterns for camouflage.

REUTERS

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 17, 2016, with the headline Scientists work out 'super cute' dino's camouflage pattern. Subscribe