Scientific Breakthrough Allowing Paleontologists to Reconstruct Color Patterns in Dinosaurs Featured in New National Geographic Channel Series Jurassic C.S.I.

Dinosaur Expert Dr. Phillip Manning Hosts Jurassic C.S.I.: In Living Color, Premiering Thursday, July 7, at 10:00 PM ET/PT

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Whether predator or prey, sneaking around or strutting before potential mates, dinosaurs likely lived and died by their distinct color patterns.  But nobody knows how dinosaurs really looked.  Exactly what color patterns did dinosaurs display?  A team of scientists are closer to answering that question, reporting that they have taken a big step in determining what the first birds looked like more than 100 million years ago, when their relatives, the dinosaurs, still ruled the earth.  The scientific breakthrough, described today in the journal Science online, will be featured in Jurassic C.S.I.: In Living Color, premiering Thursday, July 7, at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on National Geographic Channel (full series to air this August).

Dr. Phillip Manning, host of Jurassic C.S.I., and a team of scientists from the University of Manchester and Stanford University pulled pigment traces from fossilized feathers, using one of the world's most precise imaging machines, called the Synchrotron, at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University.  The Synchrotron used highly focused beams one million times stronger than a chest X-ray to search for traces of color pigment chemistry in a 110-million-year-old fossilized feather of a bird known as Gansus.  The technology helped prove that within a fossil exists the chemical ghost of the actual creature that perished millions of years ago.

"For me, unlocking the color of extinct organisms has always been one of those goals that I thought we'd never achieve," says Manning, "but with this research we have made an extraordinary step toward one day fully mapping the color of birds, squid, fish and dinosaurs that have long since vanished from the planet."

After years of research and scientific debate, Manning and the team discovered chemical traces of a pigment, an important component of color that once formed patterns in the feathers of the fossilized birds.  The breakthrough could give scientists a far greater understanding of the feeding habits and environments occupied by extinct creatures, as well as shed light on the evolution of color pigments in modern species.

For more information and clips, visit http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/jurassic-csi/all/Overview.

SOURCE National Geographic Channel