Eoconfuciusornis

Amazing fossil of an early bird from China, 130 million years old. This is the earliest known bird to have a toothless beak. This fossil made the news this week because paleontologists extracted the color bodies known as melanosomes from its feathers. When claims of extracting melanosomes were made back in 2010, they were questioned by people who said they might be bacteria. So this time the paleontologists verified that the fossilized melanosomes were embedded in keratin proteins, which pretty much proves the case. The paleontologists who made the claims back in 2010 said they had worked out the colors of their bird, but these guy are more cautious and won't say. But certainly the bird wasn't white.