Serious question about dinosaurs?

Question

how do they know what colour the skin of the dinosaurs were,could they have been different from what we are lead to believe

Answer 1

Most reptiles we know today have a neutral colouring that blends with their surrounding - green, gray, brown, etc. It's natural to assume that dinosaurs had similar colours. The only reptiles that have a vivid colouration are the poisonous ones, like snakes and poisonous lizards. Such colouration serves to warn off the possible attackers.

Answer 2

They are just going on the fact that a lot of reptiles and amphibians have green skin. Nobody really knows.

Snakes have a huge variety of skin colours, but crocodiles are the nearest relatives to dinosaurs, so they say.

Answer 3

They actually haven't got a clue.  They also make huge assumptions on the shape of creatures they only have (for instance) the lower left jawbone of too.

Much of science is still wild speculation, like sitting on this tiny planet in the corner of an outlying universe and telling the rest of us how the universe started and how it works.  Hmmm!

Answer 4

Totally agree with Reardwen - its all total speculation based on (at best) scientific assumptions.

Dinosaurs descendents still roam the earth - they are called birds but I've yet to see an artists impression or computer generated image of  a dinosaur with feathers but to me this seems perfectly logical.

Answer 5

very good question. they don't. scientists know basically what the bone structure of certain dinosaurs were like, but theres no way to tell what color the dinosaurs skin would be. A lot of science is left up to educated guesses, and I'm pretty sure that's something scientists guessed at

Answer 6

I'm not an expert of anything but think it's down to the fact that they assume that they would have colouring that would blend in with the background for the sake of camouflage. Both predators and prey need this. They can figure out what type of vegetation was around at the time from the fossil record. I don't think there's anyway to know for certain but on this basis you can make a pretty good guess.

Answer 7

The common assumption is that they blended in with their natural surroundings. So any artist impressions of Dinos in a dessert are sandy colored and those in a forest are green and brown. If the dinosaurs behaved and mated differently to to-days species and wanted to be seen and not hide they could have been rainbow colored. Perhaps that is why they are extinct.