List of bird species (Common and Latin name) used in sampling of NISC (description of colour and area on the body where feather was sampled); Details of melanosomes sampling from E. brachyptera fossil and results of their measurements; Trait database used for Ancestral state reconstruction and posterior probabilities of colour state for E. brachyptera; Posterior probabilities of colour state for E. brachyptera; 1000 phylogenetic trees downloaded from birdtree.org in Nexus format; Tukey's post-ho

We have uploaded separate file in the Step 3 section where we have listed entire content of our Supplementary material.