Rainbow Dinosaur Caihong juji

Rainbow Dinosaur Caihong juji realistic

Caihong juji was a duck sized dinosaur or more correctly Avian Dinosaur from what is now China.  It was covered in feathers, including wing feathers for flying.  It had a lot of fancy feathers on its head and neck so it had a crest that probably could be seen at times up like some birds do and flat against the head in a non-fluffed out look.  This crest was probably used for attracting mates and species identification.  The name Caihong juji means "rainbow with a big crest."  Caihong also had a small bony crest in front of each eye on the top of the snout. The above drawing is realistic.

Scientists can look at special parts of feathers called melanosomes..that determine feather color.  When a fossilized specimen is as well preserved as the Caihong that was found  the paleontologists  look to see what type of melanosomes are found there.  The determined that Caihong had a rainbow of colors on its head, chest and front of its wings.  The rest of the feathers were probably dark colored.  The rainbow colored feathers were iridescent so they shined and sparkled and looked different depending on what angle they were viewed at.   Since modern birds CAN see color we can infer that dino-birds also could see color.  Probably all the Theropod dinosaurs could see color.  So the display of feathers would have a clear purpose.

Rainbow Dinosaur Caihong juji cartoon

So the crest on the head and the feathers on the neck and chest should be the colors of the rainbow.  Feel free to look up some paintings of Caihong on the internet.  Remember that the colors of the rainbow spell out the name:  R.O.Y   G.   B.I.V.   or Red Orange Yellow  Green  Blue  Idigo   Violet.
There is of course a mix of colors, like red-orange between red and orange.  And Indigo is actually a mix of Blue and Violet.  (Violet means Purple)  There was possibly yellow-greens, and blue-greens, and etc. 

Have some fun coloring this!  Although the tail was not colorful, you could make the tail colorful. 
Also, my wife thought the cartoon drawing was better than the realistic one.  In fact, the cartoon drawing is fairly accurate as well.  If you look closely I added eyelashes on the cartoon drawing, making her a female.  Of course, the females probably were not as brilliantly colored as the males, but some female birds ARE still quite colorful.