Snail shells are sometimes vibrant and strikingly patterned. This is because of pigments which can be produced in particular cells of the snail and saved within the shell in various concentrations. Fossil shells, alternatively, are normally pale and inconspicuous as a result of the pigments are very delicate and have already decomposed. Residues of historic color patterns are due to this fact very uncommon. This makes this new discovery by researchers from the College of Göttingen and the Pure Historical past Museum Vienna (NHMW) all of the extra astonishing: they discovered pigments in twelve-million-year-old fossilised snail shells. These are the world’s first pigments from the chemical group of polyenes which have been preserved nearly unchanged and located in fossils. The research was revealed within the journal Palaeontology.
Palaeontologists from the NHMW discovered snail shells of the superfamily Cerithioidea in Burgenland, Austria. The snails lived there twelve million years in the past on the shores of a tropical sea. Professor Mathias Harzhauser at NHMW, who was concerned within the discovery, explains: “It was unclear whether or not the patterns of reddish color have been from the unique shell or have been shaped by later processes within the sediment.” Researchers at Göttingen College’s Geoscience Heart solved the thriller. They analysed the pigments utilizing Raman spectroscopy. This entails irradiating samples with laser gentle. The scattered gentle mirrored from the pattern can be utilized to obviously establish chemical compounds. They detected pigments within the fossilised shells that belong to the polyene group of chemical compounds. These are natural compounds that embody the well-known “carotenoids,” that are liable for producing the colourful pink, orange and yellow colors seen in birds’ feathers, carrots and egg yolks, as an illustration.
Dr Klaus Wolkenstein, who led the research and has been researching the chemistry of fossil pigments at Göttingen College for a few years, explains: “Usually, after such an extended time period, the very best we will hope for is that there are traces of degradation merchandise of those chemical compounds. If degraded, nonetheless, these compounds could be devoid of color. So, it was actually stunning to find these pigments, preserved nearly intact, in fossils which can be twelve million years outdated.”
