Reconstructing a dinosaur’s appearance can sometimes require guesswork. As fascinating as they might be, dinosaur bones can’t give palaeontologists a complete picture of the animal’s appearance in life.

That’s why bones with skin impressions are so valuable for palaeontologists.

When a dinosaur is buried in sand or mud, sometimes its skin can make imprints in the sediments that surround it. Although the skin eventually rots away, these imprints can gradually harden into rock that are occasionally discovered by keen-eyed palaeontologists. Skin impressions found in Dinosaur Provincial Park guided scientists towards a wonderful revelation about duck-billed dinosaurs: some of them may have been stripy.

Researchers Tristan Joubarne, Francois Therrien and Darla K. Zelenitsky reached this conclusion by analyzing patterns in the dinosaur’s skin. They found that its scales were not all the same shape – some were small and pebbly, while others were large and polygonal. These two scale shapes were grouped separately, with groups organized in stripe-like shapes running down the hadrosaur’s back. Palaeontologists like Phil Bell have suggested that these different shapes might have corresponded with different colours.

The study proposes that the stripes might’ve camouflaged this dinosaur. This type of camouflage, called disruptive colouration, is common among animals that live in open habitats (plains, prairies, savannahs etc.), which might suggest that this kind of hadrosaur might’ve preferred open habitats too.

One thing’s for sure: the insights palaeontologists can glean from skin impressions are far from skin-deep!