Illustration courtesy Michael DiGiorgio, Yale
The subject of the February 4, 2010, Science study—the 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi—turns
out to have looked something like a woodpecker the size of a chicken,
with black-and-white spangled wings and a rusty red crown.
The chicken-size dinosaur species' color patterns were decoded after
the study authors had used a scanning electron microscope to study
pigment samples taken from fossil feathers all over a specimen and then
compared the samples to pigment from modern birds. http://news.nationalgeographic.com