The Color of Dinosaurs

One of the things I’ve always wondered while I watched Jurassic Park 1 (My favorite movie), 2 (meh), and 3 (a disaster of which we shall never speak again unless we mean to mock it and it’s stupidity), is how do scientists know what color dinosaurs were? I mean, all they get from dinosaurs are bones, which I don’t think can tell you about the colors of their scales!

However, surprisingly enough, some scientists have managed to find the colors of at least one dinosaur; not only this, but this dinosaur had feathers. As Jurassic Park postulates, dinosaurs are closely related to birds. Scientists have looked at evidence from certain fossils and have concluded that several dinosaur species were the first fumbling steps of evolution towards creating what we know today as birds.

Apparently, these scientists have fossilized feathers. This is not enough, however, to determine the color. These scientists had to look at microscopic capsules in the feathers called melanins. The color of a bird’s feathers come from these capsules, so what this research team did was analyze the shape of the capsules and they got the color.

They looked into one species of dinosaur: the Sinosauropteryx, a carnivore in the Cretaceous period. In its tail, they found a dark band of feathers that the melanin test indicated to be red-brown.

Although this is very exciting, we won’t be able to find the colors of more popular dinosaurs with this method. I can just hope that scientists figure out a way before the raptor apocalypse… Maybe then we’ll have a chance to stop them!

Here is the link for the information, if you want to read more.

Question 0

Every week, I plan to research or experiment to solve a particular question I have. The questions have no topic. Also, the experiments cannot be really considered conclusive, as I am not running controls or several samples. As the Mythbusters once said, the results aren’t actual publishable results, because which could be used as sources, but I am using the scientific method to test out my inquiries. This week, I wondered how durable fingernails really were. Here are the results of my experiment.

(Mythbusters’ video talking about this: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-science-vs-scientific-method.html)

Question: How much can finger nails withstand?

About nails:

• Nails serve various purposes such as:
  • Protect our finger tips
  • Help manipulate small objects
  • Help us scratch
  • They counterforce the finger when we touch an object, which increases the finger sensitivity.
  • Fact: Nails on the dominant hand  grow slightly faster than in the non dominant hand.
  • They are made of Kerotine

About Kerotine:

• It is an integral part of our skin, hair, nails, and teeth.
• It is also present in hooves and horns.
• Depending on the amino acid levels, kerotine can be hard like hooves, or soft like our skin.
• Kerotine is difficult to dissolve because it contains cystenie disulfide, which form disulfide bridges. The structure of these bridges is similar to that of DNA, as it creates a helix shape that is very strong because the sulfur atoms bond with each other across the helix. It is depending on how much cystenie disulfide the kerotine contains that determines whether it will be strong like hooves, or nails, or soft like hair or skin.

What I will do:

I want to test the durability of nails in several ways. First, I want to hold a nail fragment up to a candle for a few seconds with some tweezers to see what happens. Then, I want to boil water and put a nail fragment into the water and wait for a few minutes to see what happens. After that, I want to put another nail fragment into chlorine, and observe the reaction.

Results:

1. Candle test: The nail quickly burned into a blackened, twisted, stump. I didn’t actually think that it would burn as quickly as it did, so I was surprised.
2. Boiling: The boiling did absolutely nothing. Maybe make the nails a little softer, but other than that nothing really happened, which doesn’t really surprise me because, as I said above, my research said that Keratin was difficult to dissolve.
3. Chlorine: This one actually surprised me. As I said before, my research said that keratine was difficult to dissolve, so I didn’t actually think that anything would happen here. However, as soon as I put the nail piece into the chlorine, little chunks of the nail started separating from it and floated around the chlorine. Not only that, I left it for about 5 or 6 minutes and when I came back, what was left of the nail was nothing more than a tiny little stump.

In hair, chlorine removes the fatty acids from the surface of the hair and imparts, or transmits, hydrophilic properties into the epicuticle, or a thin membrane which is raised after the treatment of the strand with water and chlorine. This means, from what I gathered about hydrophile, that it becomes more capable of hydrogen bonding, or dissolving in water easier than in hydrophobic substances like oil.

As to why this happens in nails, I couldn’t find an answer in the sources I visited. I investigated about fatty acids and nails as well, and apparently fatty acids are important for nails, and hair. I can only guess that these fatty acids, once remove from nails like Chlorine does, weakens the nails and causes it to split into tiny segments like I saw.

Sources:

http://www.nutritional-supplement-educational-centre.com/vitamins-for-hair-and-nail-growth.html

http://tinyurl.com/ykblpok

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-keratin.htm