THE DINOSAUR ARCHAEOPTERYX WAS CLAD IN HIPSTER BLACK
By Steve Casimiro, Adventure Journal on December 1st, 2011
Considered the first true bird by evolutionary scientists, archaeopteryx is also the mascot and inspiration for Arc’teryx (hence the apostrophe, btw), and thanks to new research by Brown University graduate student Ryan Carney, the world now knows that archaeopteryx was covered in black feathers. Carney based his conclusion on a 150-million-old feather fossil, which was actually the first archaeopteryx ever to be identified — his team used scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray analyses to detect pigment structures called melanosomes.
