* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Fossil Colour

Blobrana · L

The complex coloured plumage of extinct birds which once soared over the heads of dinosaurs could soon be revealed.
Scientists have shown they are able to interpret the colour patterns seen in 100 million-year-old fossil feathers.
Writing in the journal Biology Letters, US researchers reveal how ancient feathers found in Brazil displayed "striking" bands of black and white.

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Blobrana · L

Burgess Shale community

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Credit John Whorral/Goniagnostus

Blobrana · L

American researchers have extracted colourful organic molecules from the fossilised remains of 350-million-year-old sea creatures. The orange and yellow pigments may provide a new way of tracking the evolutionary history of the ancient crinoids, or sea lilies, which still swim around ocean reefs today.
Modern crinoids resemble gaudy flowers and plants, although – like seahorses – they are animals. Their ancient fossil relatives are faded brown and black; inorganic rock normally replaces coloured organic pigments during the fossilization process.
But Christina O’Malley and William Ausich, from Ohio State University, found light-absorbing, complex organic molecules such as anthraquinone, inside crinoid fossils dating back 350 million years – the oldest such molecules yet discovered, they claim. They announced their findings on 25 October at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, in Philadelphia.

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Blobrana · L

Scientists have shown it is possible to predict the colour of animals that are extinct.

Prof. Andrew Parker, scientist at the Natural History Museum, UK, discovered that iridescent colours in animals result from tiny structures that show up under the microscope and these can be seen even in fossils of extinct animals.
Iridescent colours, such as those on a Morphos butterfly, are known as structural colours caused by reflecting optics.
Reflecting optics, like prisms, split sunlight into the colours of the spectrum. This is different from pigmented colours that are chemically-generated colours, similar to those in paints, found also in the skin, hair, or fur of animals.
While studying seed-shrimps, crustaceans or 'insects of the sea', Prof. Parker noticed a flash of green light coming from the creatures.
This iridescent colour was caused by diffraction gratings - a reflecting surface that has fine parallel grooves - the same as those you get on a CD. The diffraction gratings occur on the antennae of seed-shrimps, and are used to provide a light display during courtship. This was the first confirmed case of a diffraction grating in nature.
Prof. Parker could now look for signs of diffraction gratings in other animals and he found some in the 515 million-year-old Burgess Shale fossils - a community of marine animals that were buried in mud and preserved in extremely fine detail.

Colour reconstruction of Burgess Shale worm Canadia (x1500) that lived 515 million years ago

Diffraction gratings were found on the outer surfaces of three of the Burgess Shale species.
The surfaces were reconstructed and these models were placed underwater and illuminated with the type of light that would have lit the Burgess Shale fossils 515 million years ago.

'I was looking at a scene of life, 515 million years old, depicted accurately in colour' - Prof. Andrew Parker.

Previously any colour given to the skin, feathers or fur of extinct animals was guesswork. Prof. Parker's work allows a much truer representation of the colour of extinct animals and can be applied to other extinct creatures.

'A question that struck me was 'Why were animals at that time so colourful?' The obvious answer was that eyes existed then, which they did. This set up other questions 'When did the first eye exist on Earth, and what happened when it did?' The answer to the latter, I was to discover, was exciting - the first eye triggered evolution's big bang' - Prof. Andrew Parker.

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