SCIENTISTS have discovered a dinosaur that was able to change the color of its skin — a defense mechanism that has never been seen before in any other dinosaur species.

    Using well-preserved fossils of the Chinese Psittacosaurus a team at the University of Bristol, England found that the prehistoric beast used a type of camouflage called counter-shading.

    This is where the underside becomes light the upper portion is darker — which makes the animal appear flat and confuses their predators.

    It also had a heavily pigmented face and hind legs that were striped on the inside and reticulated and spotted on the outside.

    Paleontologist and co-author of the study Jakob Vinther said the creature was “very cute” and they could have turned into great pets, had they not become extinct. Psittacosaurus means “parrot-lizard” named after its parrot-like beak.

    It was an early relative of the three-horned Triceratops. The 5-foot-long (1.5-meter-long) bipedal plant-eater lived in northeastern China from 133 million to 120 million years ago.

    “We predicted that the psittacosaur must have lived in a forest. This demonstrates that fossil color patterns can provide not only a better picture of what extinct animals looked like, but they can also give new clues about extinct ecologies and habitats,” said Dr. Vinther.

    The color pattern suggested Psittacosaurus lived in a forest environment with diffuse light from a dense canopy of trees, the researchers said. They created a life-sized, full-color, three-dimensional model based on their findings.

    “Our model suggests it was super, super cute. I think they would have made fantastic pets. They look a bit like E.T,” added Dr. Vinther, referring to the friendly alien in the 1982 film “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”

    It was roughly the size of a Labrador retriever, and probably was a common meal for Cretaceous Period predators like the 30-foot-long T. rex cousin Yutyrannus.(SD-Agencies)