The feathers of extinct species hold color information. Shown here is a fossil bird specimen from the famous Messel quarry in Germany. Photo © Jakob Vinther.

In 1860 a single feather from the Solnhofen limestone quarry in Germany was the first evidence of Archaeopteryx, the now famous earliest-known bird. Last year, it was again a single feather, this time from Brazil, that a creative team from Yale University used to establish that pigment-bearing structures called melanosomes are preserved in some fossils.

The small paper by Jakob Vinther, Derek Briggs, and Richard Prum had thunderous implications. Not only were the visible patterns of feathers in fossils meaningful and related to pattern, but structures in fossils not visible to the naked eye could be used to infer color. The color of what? The color of feathers in extinct dinosaurs and birds. It is not a stretch to say that we are at the dawn of a new day in how we view the past. The colors of the prehistoric world, once left to the imaginations of paleoartists, will from this point on be knowable and based in science.

Now the same Yale team has taken the next step, in collaboration with Julia Clarke of the University of Texas and Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Museum. With a paper published today in Biology Letters, they are the first to infer color from fossilized feathers in an extinct species. What they have discovered is iridescence, a visual effect that results in our eyes perceiving rainbow-like colors when light hits the black feathers of birds, such as swifts or grackles, at certain angles.

It is perhaps fitting that once again, it is a single feather, this time from the fossil-rich Messel Oil Shale quarry near Darmstadt, Germany, that has provided the seminal discovery that will open up whole new worlds, this time the world of prehistoric color.

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