A Jurassic rainbow

THERE’S not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There’s an iridescent dinosaur.

Scientists have announced the discovery of a crow-sized, birdlike dinosaur with colourful feathers from northeastern China that lived 161 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.

They named it Caihong, the Mandarin word for rainbow. Microscopic structures in the exquisitely preserved, nearly complete fossil unearthed in Hebei Province indicated that it boasted iridescent feathers, particularly on its head, neck and chest, with colours like those of hummingbirds.