Dinosaurs like T.rex could have resembled brightly coloured birds, says palaeo expert

Dinosaurs have captured imaginations for generations. Through film, TV, art and other media, we have sought to depict these long-dead animals.

But experts like palaeontologist Jack Horner (inspiration for the character of Dr Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster film Jurassic Park) believe that we have been too restricted by old ideas about what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived.

Horner says that birds descended directly from dinosaurs, so it might have been possible they were as equally as colourful and vibrant? He asks if dinos might have been singers, or dancers, like birds. This image of dinosaurs as colourful and weird may come as a surprise to many who have grown up with dinos as big, grey-brown monsters. Horner explains that even Tyrannosaurus rex may have been coloured and feathered.