The primary colours of the cassowary in its neck and wattle are pigment based....nothing to do with structure.
The feathers are irridescent but so what....that's not a major feature until it's taken to the level of say a Victoria RIflebird.
makes them bloody hard to photograph...the AF does not like the irridescence for what ever reason
Feathered dinosaurs had the same and that is detected in fossils.
It's the pigment that is the major color component for the cassowary as it is in this bush turkey
The texture of skin and scales have come through in fine sediment fossils but not sure there is evidence of pigmentation in any of that.
I wonder if the irridescence is actually a camoflage making it hard for a predator to focus in the dim light of a rain forest.
Certainly in modern birds pigment and structure have combined.
Good info here
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBi ... ument_viewah - should have looked a bit further ....even pigmentation has been revealed
Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time
Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time
"Dino fuzz" pigment discovery in feathers may strengthen dinosaur-bird link.
By Chris Sloan, National Geographic magazine paleontology editor, for National Geographic News
An illustration depicting dinosaur Sinosauropteryx in true color, with a striped tail and orange back feathers
Sinosauropteryx is the first fossil dinosaur to have its color scientifically established.
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY JAMES ROBINS
Pigments have been found in fossil dinosaurs for the first time, a new study says.
The discovery may prove once and for all that dinosaurs' hairlike filaments—sometimes called dino fuzz—are related to bird feathers, paleontologists announced today. (Pictures: Dinosaur True Colors Revealed by Feather Find.)
The finding may also open up a new world of prehistoric color, illuminating the role of color in dinosaur behavior and allowing the first accurately colored dinosaur re-creations, according to the study team, led by Fucheng Zhang of China's Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology.
The team identified fossilized melanosomes—pigment-bearing organelles—in the feathers and filament-like "protofeathers" of fossil birds and dinosaurs from northeastern China.
Found in the feathers of living birds, the nano-size packets of pigment—a hundred melanosomes can fit across a human hair—were first reported in fossil bird feathers in 2008.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... rs-nature/Seems that cassowary would felt right at home in dino land.
The two most common types of melanin found in modern birds are eumelanin, associated with black and grey feathers, and phaeomelanin, found in reddish brown to yellow feathers.
Melanosomes of both types were found during the new study, providing "the first empirical evidence for reconstructing the colors and color patterning" in dinosaurs and Chinese fossil birds, Zhang and his colleagues write.
For example, the 125-million-year-old early bird Confuciusornis was found to have color variation between blacks and browns in a single feather. And dark areas in Sinosauropteryx's tail were "absolutely packed with phaeomelanosomes," said Benton—a finding that led the team to propose that the dinosaur's tail was striped with "chestnut to rufous [reddish brown] tones."
The University of Maryland's Holtz said, "It seems reasonable to infer that the same size and shape melanosomes in dinosaurs would have resulted in the same colors as in modern birds."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... rs-nature/another article on it
Feathered Dinosaur Colors Bloomed 150 Million Years Ago
Pigments colored early birds and mammals during the age of dinosaurs.
By Dan Vergano, National Geographic
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 14, 2014
snip
"The story wasn't as much about color, we think, as it was about physiology," Clarke says.
Melanin, the pigment protein inside melanosomes, is also involved in metabolism—how animals burn energy in their cells, Clarke says. These pigments broadened at a time when the first warm-blooded mammals and the flightless, feathered dinosaurs ancestral to modern birds were evolving.
"So this study offers a tantalising prospect—suggesting evidence for links between evolution of coloured feathers and metabolism," McNamara said, by email.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... etabolism/There's a twist...
I wonder if the pigment levels will allow a rough dating technique as far as development over time goes.
and it was not just proto-birds......but the big bruisers as well
Scientists have uncovered the first traces of pigment in reptile fossils - a dark hue found in three extinct deep-sea beasts distantly related to today's leatherback turtle.
"This is the first time that... remains of original pigments have been detected in any (extinct) reptile, including dinosaurs," Johan Lindgren of Sweden's Lund University said.
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technolog ... kin-colourNever know where a photograph might lead