What color was T. Rex? What about triceratops or glyptodon? Until recently, the palette of prehistory was the sole provenance of daydreams, CGI artists or kids with crayons.

Advances in imaging technology are bringing us closer to real answers. Over the past decade, we’ve learned that Sinosauropteryx’s tail was striped, and Microraptor’s head was blue-black and shiny, like a crow’s.

A paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications adds to the paint box. In it, a team of researchers provide the first conclusive fossil evidence that an ancient creature contained pheomelanin — the same pigment that gives a red hue to chicken feathers, tiger fur and your freckles. Their findings, and the method that led to them, will allow researchers to search for more evidence of this coloring across the fossil record.

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Even in well-preserved fossils, pigments deteriorate quickly. Researchers have a few workarounds to find clues to color. Some look for melanosomes, the organelles in animal cells that make and store pigments. The shape of a melanosome can indicate what type of pigment was once inside, while the organization of melanosomes within a feather can suggest whether a bird (or dinosaur) was dull or iridescent.