In what I think is an amazing discovery, the colour of a dinosaur, Sinosauroopteryx, has been determined to be yellow and white stripes.

“In particular, it helps to resolve a long-standing debate about the original function of feathers – whether they were used for flight, insulation, or display.

“We now know that feathers came before wings, so feathers did not originate as flight structures.

“We therefore suggest that feathers first arose as agents for colour display and only later in their evolutionary history did they become useful for flight and insulation.”

The team of palaeontologists involved with the research, published in the journal Nature, report two kinds of “melanosomes”, parts of proteins that provide the colour found in the feathers of numerous birds and dinosaurs from the Jehol beds of north east China.

They are buried within the structure of feathers and hair in modern birds and mammals, giving black, grey, and rufous tones such as orange and brown.

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Scientists in Italy are hoping to bring back the Auroch, a type of giant cattle, which has been extinct since 1627.

The huge cattle with sweeping horns which once roamed the forests of Europe have not been seen for nearly 400 years.

Now Italian scientists are hoping to use genetic expertise and selective breeding of modern-day wild cattle to recreate the fearsome beasts which weighed around 2,200lb and stood 6.5 feet at the shoulder.

Breeds of large cattle which most closely resemble Bos primigenius, such as Highland cattle and the white Maremma breed from Italy, are being bred with each other in a technique known as “back-breeding”.

At the same time, scientists say they have for the first time created a map of the auroch’s genome, so that they know precisely what type of animal they are trying to replicate.

“We were able to analyse auroch DNA from preserved bone material and create a rough map of its genome that should allow us to breed animals nearly identical to aurochs,” said team leader Donato Matassino, head of the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology in Benevento, in the southern Campania region.

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Chemical analysis has found that pine resin was used to seal a 2,000-year-old amphora found in Morocco.

“We have studied the substance that was used to seal the container using three different techniques, and we compared it with pine resin from today”, José Vicente Gimeno, one of the authors of the study and a senior professor at the UV, tells SINC.

The results confirm that the small sample analysed, which is 2,000 years old, contains therpenic organic compounds (primaric, isoprimaric and dehydroabietic acids), allowing this to be classified as resin from a tree from the Pinus genus.

The researchers have identified some substances that indicate the age of resins, such as such as 7-oxo-DHA acid, although this kind of compound was not abundant in the sample due to the amphora’s good state of preservation. In addition, Gimeno says that the archaeological resin of the amphora found was hard and blackish with yellow spots, unlike present-day resin, which is more malleable and orangey in colour, similar to the fresh sap of the tree.

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The bone chemistry of the Mayan king K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo show he did not grow up in Copán, the city he ruled.

Along with inscriptions at Copán, the new evidence suggests that the site’s first king was born into a ruling family at Caracol, a powerful lowland kingdom in Belize. KYKM probably spent his young adult years as a member of the royal court at Tikal, a Maya kingdom in the central lowlands of Guatemala, before being sent to Copán to found a new dynasty at the settlement there, Price’s team proposes.

“These findings reinforce the notion that the Copán state was founded as part of a colonial expansion,” says archaeologist and study coauthor Robert Sharer of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “They also demonstrate the widespread connections maintained by Maya kings.” This line of investigation aims to unravel how Classic era Maya city-states, which dominated parts of Mexico and Central America from about 200 to 900, originated and developed.

Hieroglyphics at Copán that were deciphered more than 20 years ago refer to KYKM as a foreigner who was inaugurated as king in 426 and arrived the next year. But it has been unclear whether the inscriptions referred to an actual historical event or were a form of royal propaganda. In 2007, archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin noticed that an inscription carved on a Copán stone monument referred to KYKM by a title indicating that he was originally a Caracol lord.

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A new ’sniff test’ has been developed that can help libraries and museums preserve old documents and books.

The test is based on detecting the levels of volatile organic compounds.

These are released by paper as it ages and produce the familiar “old book smell”.

The international research team, led by Matija Strlic from University College London’s Centre for Sustainable Heritage, describes that smell as “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness”.

“This unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents,” they wrote in the journal article.

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