“No pieces of dinosaur skin have ever been found; like other soft tissue, it decays rapidly.”
In 2002, a dinosaur mummy was found in Montana.
In 2004, another mummy was found in N. Dakota.
green
CaptainMetHead, just so we know what column you are referring to, it’s a good idea to reference it in the OP. Is this the one?
Other than that, I think they had yellow polka dots, but what do I know? 
The linked articles say that soft tissue survived, including skin, but fossilised. That would preserve the structure of the soft tissue, but I don’t think it would preserve the colour.
Not to hijack the thread, but this is actually the best argument I can think of to clone specimens once we’ve compiled enough data to sequence and build a sample of their DNA.
I can just imagine the reaction of the scientific community and the world at large if they turned out to be Barney purple.
Precisely. Maybe a chemical analysis would be possible that would give some kind of reasonable guess at the color, but…
In most cases it’s not actual skin that’s preserved, but a 3-d impression of the skin in surrounding mud. No actual mummified tissue is preserved, it more a cast of a mummy.
The closest you’ll get to dinosaur coloration is in fossils that preserve feathers. Here’s an article on the topic:
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=5898
Some feathered dinosaur fossils preserve distinct patterns in their feathers, such as an apparently striped or ringed tail in Sinosauropteryx.
I have a dream that dinosaurs will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Why would dinosaurs be any different from modern reptiles when it comes to color? Snakes, lizards, etc. seem to come in a wide variety of colors…and some lizards change color according to their surroundings.
I kinda like the idea of a bright purple T-Rex…
IANAPaleontologist, but I’m guessing different atmospheric conditions, different body needs, different food-chain environment (who eats who), and other conditions different between then and now would make a difference in skin color… 
For all we know, they are all the primary colors, or … forget polka dots, how about paisleys or tartan. 
By the way, color-changing dinos is a cool idea, you just don’t see that in dino movies and TV shows very often.
Well maybe not quite tartan, but the scaling pattern of the fossilised skin from the N. Dakota hadrosaur may indicate that a section of its tail was at least partially striped. Differences in the sizing of these scales often conforms to colour patterns within modern reptiles.
In terms of specific colours it’s pretty much pin the tail on the hadrosaur.
And, IIRC, the skin on the underside of the body was apparently a different shade (the cast was lighter) than that on the back - also in line with modern reptiles.
Since theropod dinosaurs are so closely related to birds as to be virtuyally indistinguishable, and birds have a keen sense of colour with regard to their sexual display, one would assume the same would apply to dinosaurs. Lots of bright colours, especially amongst the males. Polka dots are not at all to be ruled out.
“Paisley”?
Goddam Hippy Dinosaurs!
Send em all to Vietnam!
While they probably share color schemes with birds and perhaps with their more distant relatives, reptiles, it’s worth noting that there seems to be little point in camouflage coloration for a 30-ton sauropod.
When you’re the largest land animal that ever lived and the ground shakes when you walk, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of passing undetected.
I seriously doubt this is true. Not that dinosaurs are related to birds, but the part about being indistinguishable. Cite?
Reptiles weren’t exactly “more distant relatives” for dinosaurs; dinosaurs were (and, from a cladistics viewpoint, still are) reptiles.
Of course, while camouflage coloring probably wouldn’t have accomplished much, there was still the potential for sexual displays or individual recognition. All of which is purely speculative, of course.
Correct: theropod dinosaurs are not indistinguishable from birds. It does get a little tricky as you get closer to the origins of birds, but then, that is expected to be the case, and is the case for pretty much all groups (e.g., at which point does an artiodactyl become a whale; when do synapisds become mammals, etc.). But even Archaeopteryx, often considered the first “bird” (actually, it’s the earliest “true” bird we know of; it was most likely an evolutionary dead-end itself, and thus probably not the true urvogel) is quite distinguishable from modern forms, and distinguishable from its ancestors, as well.
Yet elephants are not brightly colored (which they could be, since they don’t need to hide) nor camouflaged, at least not as much as some animals that blend in with trees, leaves and ground using random coloration patterns.
It’s possible it needed to be camouflaged while resting or eating. Just cuz it’s 30-tons doesn’t mean things don’t want to eat it - in fact, that makes it a better kill, something that size will feed a family of smaller dinos for quite some time.
Ever seen the discovery channel shows where lions take down an elephant? I’m sure there were predators even for a 30-ton herbivore. Maybe when it’s being stalked (or sleeping or eating, otherwise holding still and not causing earthquake-like rumbling with its movement) its camo colored skin keeps the predators from finding it?
Not indistinguishable from modern birds, but here’s a relevant quote from Paleontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History:
Not to derail the thread, but “true” being the operative word here. There are earlier animals with modern-style feathers (Pedopenna, Epidendrosaurus, Epidexipteryx) that are only not considered birds because the cladistic definition of “bird” had already been set in such a way that Archaeopteryx or another member of its immediate line MUST be the first.