An artist’s impression of how the snake might have looked
Jim Robbins
A study of a ten-million-year-old fossilised snake has shown for the first time that mineralised tissues can preserve evidence of colour, shedding new light on how ancient organisms would have looked. Previously, the only pigments known to have survived fossilisation were browns, blacks and muddy reds when melanin lasts as organic material. But the ancient snake's skin was fossilised in calcium phosphate, a mineral that preserves details on a subcellular level. Dr Maria McNamara, a palaeobiologist at University College Cork and colleagues, including Dr Stuart Kearns of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences , found that the fossilised snakeskin maintained the unique shapes of different types of pigment cells. These would have created yellows, greens, blacks, browns and iridescence while the animal was alive. The pigments themselves are now decayed but with the cell shapes - specific to each kind of pigment - mineralised, there was enough information to reconstruct their colours. Dr McNamara first came across the fossilised snake while conducting her PhD research on fossils from the Libros site in Spain.
TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
And extend your reading, free of charge and with no commitment.
