how did they know the colors of dinosaurs?
In: Biology
Short, short answer: We don’t.
This was a fascinating listen: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/welcome-to-jurassic-art/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/welcome-to-jurassic-art/), and the book it references ([All Yesterdays](https://www.amazon.com/All-Yesterdays-Speculative-Dinosaurs-Prehistoric/dp/1291177124/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=all+yesterdays&linkCode=sl2&linkId=90ee80d225245d82b011a6a812f9b284&qid=1628525265&sr=8-1)) seems pretty cool.
The slightly-less short answer (discussed in even less short form in those links) is that not only do we not know color, but we also don’t know what their shape was — we have bones, but we don’t know what their fatty deposits may have done to their body shape. The prime example is that a future “paleontologist” reconstructing a camel from only a skeleton would not be able to tell it had a hump.
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