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Going back, say, ten years ago, would you ever imagine that you would have been able to tell what colour any dinosaurs would have been?
回首过去，比如十年前，想象一下，你还能辨别出每一种恐龙可能是什么颜色吗？
No, I mean I think at that time I would have said that it's one of the things we will never know. And so we just focus up and see what we've got here.
不能。我想那时候我会说这件事我们永远不会知道。所以我们只是专注起来，看看我们在这里留下的。
Using a scanning electron microscope, Mike can find clues about the pigmentation of these ancient fossil feathers.
在电子扫描显微镜的帮助下，迈克可以找到有关这些古老化石特征的线索。
And if we just have a look at this, the required time amount of locations, that's 9,000 times.
如果我们只是看这个，需要放大倍数为9000倍。
All these sausage shapes then are melanosomes, and then a living feather.
所有这些香肠形状都是黑素体，然后是逼真的羽毛。
They would be full of the chemical melanin, which would in fact give the colour.
他们会充满化学黑色素，这些才是真正有颜色的原因。
And these sausage-shaped ones are a sure indicator of a particular kind of melanin, which is the one that gives a black or dark brown colour.
这些香肠形状的东西是一个特殊黑色素的标志，也是羽毛显现出黑色或者棕色的原因。
So in some cases like this, the field of views is completely packed with the sausage-shaped ones.
所以在某些情况下，能看见这一块地方充满了香肠形状的物质。
So we know this must have been intensely black. If they were more loosely spaced, we would know it was a paler colour, maybe dark brown or even gray.
所以我们知道这里一定是密集的黑色。如果他们是比较松散的排列的，它就会呈暗淡的颜色，也许是深棕色或者是灰色。
So is it just really the presence or absence of the black pigments that you are able to ascertain?
那么你能够确定它是真的存在或缺少黑色的色素吗？
Well, the wonderful thing is there is another form of melanin that gives a ginger colour.
嗯，奇妙的是，还有一种形式的能够呈现出姜色的黑色素。
And so, and it is packaged in a different shape of melanosome, not this kind of cigar-shaped or sausage-shaped one, but a spherical one, a little ball. Close it up. We get the vacuum going.
所以，它存在于一个不同形状的黑色体中，不是这种雪茄型或者香肠型的，而是球形的，一个小球。这块地方还有很大的空间。
A sample taken from a different fossil shows what the structures that carried this ginger pigment look like.
从另一个化石中取得的样品看起来像姜的形状。
That's entirely different. This surface looks as if they've taken a melon baller and scooped up lots of little spherical hollows.
这是完全不同的。表面上看起来好像是他们搓球机在球的表面制作了很多凹槽。
So what colour would these melanosomes have made?
所以这些黑色素造成了什么颜色？
This is definitely ginger. And if you look at this ginger hair from a man of our human being, that's what you see ourselves.
很明显是姜黄色。如果你看到一个人的头发是姜黄色的，那么你看到的就是你自己。
So is it relatively easy to compare your dinosaur feathers with what's already known about, the feathers of a living bird, to get that comparison to know what colours you were looking at here?
因此通过已知的存活的鸟类的羽毛去比较恐龙的羽毛相对容易些，这样你就可以知道你在这里看到的是什么？
We can put the specimens in one after the other. There is the modern one. There is the fossil. Spot the difference.
我们可以将标本一个接一个的摆放。有现代的，也有化石。观察它们的区别。
No difference at all. And who on earth would have thought a dinosaur was close to a bird?
一点差别都没有。到底谁会觉得恐龙会和鸟有相似之处呢？
But here we are, you know, it's kind of proved in the skeletons. And now if you like, proved in the melatonin of the feathers.
但是我们会，你知道，在骨骼上这已经得到证实。现在如果你还想了解，可以证实在羽毛的褪黑激素里。
