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. 2018 Jan 15;9:217. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-02515-y

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© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 5 — Platelet-like nanostructures in Caihong juji and melanosomes in iridescent extant feathers. a–d Fossilized nanostructures from Caihong feathers preserved as molds in a neck feather (a) and three-dimensional preservation in a neck feather, with SEM stage rotated 45° to show 3D platelet morphology (b), a back feather with SEM stage at 0° (c) and a neck feather showing nanostructure packing (d); e Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) showing overlapping melanosomes within a feather barbule; f white-tailed starfrontlet (Coeligena phalerata) showing stacking and interior morphology (air bubbles) of melanosomes in a feather barbule; g black-tailed trainbearer (Lesbia victoriae) showing exterior surface and morphology of isolated melanosomes in a feather barb; h moustached treeswift (Hemiprocne mystacea) showing densely packed melanosomes in the barbule of a crown feather. Inset in d illustrates 3D stacking of platelet-shaped nanostructures. All scale bars: 1000 nm. Photo credits: Chao PC (e, license CC BY-2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode), Misty Vaughn f, Lip Kee (g, license CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode), Lip Kee (h, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode)