Dinosaurs were blonde, ginger or dark haired just like humans, scientists found.

An analyses of pigments in bird feathers who are the descendants of dinosaurs found they had the same colours as human hair.

And the metals that cause the different shades of hair have been found in fossil remains.

Until now Hollywood or natural history programme makers have been guessing the appearance of dinosaurs for years.

Colour is one of the most debated mysterious surrounding dinosaurs.

But the researchers are very confident using the new breakthrough they will be able to fully map out the real colours of the extinct creatures.

An international team of researchers, led by The University of Manchester, have analysed feathers from birds of prey to find chemical markers of different pigments that give birds and human hair their distinctive colours.

This remarkable discovery means scientists can now identify the true colour of dinosaurs and other extinct creatures by reconstructing long-lived chemical markers in fossils.

Senior author Professor of Geochemistry Roy Wogelius at The University of Manchester said: "It's one of the big unknowns, kids like to look at bones and imagine what a T-Rex would actually look like.

"A fundamental rule in geology is that the present is the key to the past.

"This work on modern animals now provides another chemical 'key' for helping us to accurately reconstruct the appearance of long extinct animals."

Melanin is the dominant pigment in mammals and birds that gives them either a black or dark brown colour, for example in ravens, or a reddish or yellow hue, as in foxes.

The black pigment is called eumelanin, while the reddish type is pheomelanin.

Traces of the pigment eumelanin, which gives a black or brown colour and leaves behind traces of copper, and pheomelanin, which gives a red or yellow shade and leaves behind traces of zinc, have been found in creatures up to 120 million years old.

Professor Wogelius added: "There is lots of the dark pigment eumelanin in dinosaurs but we are confident that the lighter pigment pheomelanin was quite widespread.

"The pigments are the also in bird feathers and human hair, I call pheomelanin the Scarlett Johansson pigment because of her blonde hair.

"There has been a recent drive in science to nano sized things, but we're imaging on a large scale, looking at the whole feathers rather than just a small section.

"We map 3,000 times faster than anyone else and will be able to restore big organisms like dinosaurs.

"This has been an amazing journey for me, we can now look at soft tissue and not just bones, something people thought wouldn't be possible.

Lead author Dr Nick Edwards, a Post Doctoral Research Associate at Manchester said: "Melanin is a very important component in biology, but its exact chemistry is still not precisely known, especially as to how metals such as calcium, copper and zinc interact with it.

"Here we have used a new approach to probe these components of melanin and have found that there are subtle but measurable differences between the different types of melanin with regards to certain elements."

Co-author Professor Phil Manning added: "The avian descendants of dinosaurs have kept the chemical key to unlocking colour precisely locked in their feather chemistry."

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.