The scientists said, where did the color of bird eggs

Paleontologists have discovered that pigmented eggs dinosaurs of the whole group to which they belong, today's birds.

People who are accustomed to see the eggs alone, it is difficult to imagine how diverse is their coloring, from chocolate brown to green, from brick red to bright blue. And there was this long before the diversity of birds – with a single mutation that appeared in the dinosaurs millions of years ago. In an article published in the journal Nature, scientists reveal the details of this important event.

In fact, it's a lot of animals. Therefore, until now it was thought that this adaptation came from the representatives of this group. Dinosaurs can be found in different colors. In particular, Jasmine Wiman (Jasmina Wiemann) and her colleagues have discovered a fossilized egg of the oviraptorid age of 70 million years, the biliverdin is a pigment that makes them blue-green color. Were also found and red-brown protoporphyrin: it is a combination of the two key pigments create all the color options of eggs in birds.

In the new work by the same team of researchers covered a much more extensive material of 19 species of dinosaurs and modern reptiles and birds. The biliverdin was able to find the eggs of different dinosaurs. They all belong to the group of Eumaniraptora, which will include modern birds. Attempts to detect traces of color in dinosaur eggs and other groups have been unsuccessful: all of them, apparently, was just white. Scientists believe that this indicates the appearance of color within the Eumaniraptora clade in the early stages of its evolutionary development, when splitting into subgroups has not yet occurred.

Most likely, it was a single event, even of some mutation, which caused accumulation of bilirin in the shell and made the eggs for the beginning of blue-green. On the other hand, causes of this mutation is difficult. Maybe bright colors facilitate the search of eggs in thick grass or helped to distinguish them from eggs planted "parasitic brood" like the modern cuckoo.