Cincinnati Museum Center dinosaurs reveal first-ever view of sauropod skin

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 16, 2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Cody Hefner (513) 608-5777, chefner@cincymuseum.org

Newly published research paves the way for future analysis about the color and appearance of dinosaurs

CINCINNATI – Researchers are a step closer to a full-color look into the prehistoric past. A new paper published last week in Royal Society Open Science reveals what certain dinosaur skin may have looked like. The findings, using specimens from the collections of Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) are the first evidence of color patterning in a sauropod dinosaur and pave the way for future research.

The full research paper is available online at Royal Society Open Science.

Researchers from the United States, the UK and Hong Kong examined six Diplodocus specimens from CMC’s vertebrate paleontology collections to understand the color and patterning of the dinosaur’s skin. The juvenile sauropods – four-legged, long-necked herbivores – were previously excavated from a site in Montana dating back to the Late Jurassic, roughly 145 to 155 million years ago. Similar research has yielded results for avian-like dinosaurs covered in feathers, but the team’s research revealed the first look at the skin of reptilian sauropods.

Reflecting on the findings, Glenn Storrs, PhD, Withrow Farny Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Cincinnati Museum Center and co-author of the paper, said, “The recognition of color patterns in extinct dinosaurs is a relatively recent discovery and highlights the importance of both museum collections and the new technologies that may be brought to bear in their study.”

One of the specimens used in the study is on display in CMC’s Dinosaur Hall, along with a bronze reproduction of its head that provides tactile evidence of its scaled skin.

The group of juvenile Diplodocus chosen for the study likely died during the dry season and their bodies desiccated in the sun for several weeks before being buried by sediment and then fossilized. This natural near-mummification helped preserve the skin of the dinosaurs, leading to the fossilization of their scales. Researchers used scalpels to chip away small pieces of the preserved skin for closer examination using scanning electron microscopy and geochemical analysis. The preservation of pigment-bearing bodies (melanosomes) showed the researchers clear evidence of skin color patterning, the first proof of its kind for a sauropod.

The skin speckling is similar to modern crocodilian species, which share a similar scaled skin type to Diplodocus. The researchers hypothesize the speckled pattern served as camouflage for the dinosaurs, especially critical for the juvenile herbivores that often found themselves the prey of Torvosaurus, Allosaurus and other predators.

The results pave the way for future research that may reveal the exact skin color of Diplodocus and offer an answer to whether the speckling is uniform or only present on certain parts of the body, and if adults in the species are speckled or if the patterning is relegated to the more vulnerable juveniles.

The groundbreaking Diplodocus skin patterning research is the second published scientific paper this year utilizing CMC’s dinosaur specimens and one of a number made possible by the museum’s collections. In April, the museum’s Daspletosaurus specimen was at the center of new research published in Acta Paleontologica Polonica that challenged the evolution and family tree of the Cretaceous predator. Another paper, published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society in September, confirmed the great auk in CMC’s collections was indeed the last living female of the species that went extinct in 1844.

“Fossilized melanosomes reveal colour patterning of a sauropod dinosaur” was authored by Tess Gallagher, Dan Folkes, Michael Pittman, Tom G. Kaye, Glenn W. Storrs and Jason Schein. The full research paper is available online at Royal Society Open Science.