Cross Breeds

How can scientists tell what extinct animals look like?

Ok I was looking up information about the Precambrian Era and I thought about something, how do scientists tell what color and features the extinct animals look like? I would think that some dinosaurs are not the colors we think they are. They could be blue, purple, white, and any other color. But why do scientists usually use the same colors for the dinosaurs and other animals. One other thing is how do scientists tell if there were Jellyfish? I mean do they even have bones? Please reply.

Public Comments

1. A lot of questions to answer here,,, First off, scientists are not sure what color dinosaurs were. There are actually more recent speculations that some dinosaurs were very colorful. They think the colors were used to attract mates. Secondly, they know the shape and size based on bones and bone shapes/sizes. Lastly, animals do not have to have bones to be fossilized; however, it makes it much easier to distinguish when it is fossilized bone. A few examples are corals/sponges/starfish, they are all over the pennsylvanian stratographic layer. Starfish trace fossils are very visible in the fossils around Kansas City Missouri. They are really neat actually, you can see where a starfish lived by the trace fossils of the mud it had moved around.
2. They can't really, it's an educated guess but I'd imagine it is quite accurate. With regards to colour and dinosaurs, this guesswork is based around current lizards we have on Earth, specifically the bigger ones. Crocodiles, Komodo dragons etc. You're right though, T-Rex could have been blue, or maybe chameleon in nature, who knows?
3. Often, if there's enough evidence to reconstruct the paleoenvironment, researchers can get a good idea of coloration based on the need for most animals to blend in. Inhabitants of a forested area may be green or brown; desert dwellers lighter in color. There are some dinosaur "mummies" which give scientists an excellent idea of the creatures's appearance. Even skeletal remains generally suffice since the areas of muscle attachment provide evidence of the extent of soft tissue.