A new study study suggests that plumage evolved in dinosaurs because its bright coloration facilitated communication and mate selection.

“If you look at a cladogram (tree of life) for a group of animals for which the relationships are well known and you find a feature that is shared by all of them, it’s pretty safe to assume that this feature was present at the base of the tree and kept throughout the evolution of the last common ancestor into the different species,” Dr. Marie-Claire Koschowitz, of the University’s Steinmann Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology told The Huffington Post. “So I looked at the morphology and general color vision in reptilia and birds and lo and behold, it turned out that tetrachromacy is present in every single branch of todays reptiles.”

Link to article here.