Once their dinosaur competition was wiped out, mammals rapidly diversified. This diversification allowed mammals to develop new fur colors and patterns that were better suited to their newly ...

It’s hard to predict which animals will transform like butterflies upon reaching adulthood. Some animals, like horses or ...

Our earliest mammalian ancestors avoided the dominant dinosaurs by only coming out at night and having uniformly dark, grey-brown fur for camouflage.

While many dinosaurs and pterosaurs flaunted flamboyant feathers, early mammals were a dull lot. A study of the fossilised fur of six mammals that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods ...

The new research is the first to look back at early mammals in full color. Using advanced fossil imaging methods and a thorough examination of the pigment-producing cells present in living mammals, ...

During the age of dinosaurs, early mammals probably lacked the stripes and spots of their modern relatives, having uniformly dark, drab coats.

The early mammals living alongside the dinosaurs might have all had dark-coloured fur. Living a nocturnal lifestyle, the animals’ colours would have helped them blend into the night. Dark brown was in ...

The early mammals that lived alongside the dinosaurs upwards of 150 million years ago (mya) were likely covered in dark and dusky greyish-brown fur, according to a quantitative reconstruction of ...

The team suggests that after the dinosaurs went extinct, mammals diversified to fill niches they left behind and developed skin and fur colors better suited to a variety of environments.

hiding in the dark to avoid being devoured by the many predatory dinosaurs and other animals would have snacked on these little animals. But, this fur colouration study is the first to find ...

That was until the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Once their dinosaur competition was wiped out, mammals rapidly diversified. This diversification allowed mammals to develop new fur colors and ...