Re: 50 mya Beetle Found, Color Preserved; Possible For Other Fossils?

[Mickey Rowe <rowe@psych.ucsb.edu>]

[The following was held back by the typical technical glitch -- MPR ]


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From: "Dino Guy Ralph" <ralph.miller@alumni.usc.edu>
To: <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>, <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Subject: Re: 50 mya Beetle Found, Color Preserved; Possible For Other Fossils?
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 10:18:38 -0700

> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0818_030818_beetlefossil.html
>
> Now under exceptional circumstances, scientists have uncovered and
> explained a 50-million-year-old beetle fossil that still retains the
> bright blue metallic hue it sported in life. This beetle and others
> from the same site, are very rare examples of fossils that retain
> any original color, and are the oldest colored fossils ever found.

For another example, see a colorful stag beetle fossil on pp. 50-51 in
the Messel article in the February 2000 issue of _National
Geographic_.  Interference pattern textures and red pigment cells have
been studied in a 370 million year old placoderm (armored fish),
suggesting a red back and a silver underside. See _Science_, Vol. 277,
August 15, 1997, p. 905 for a restoration. Diffraction patterns on the
Cambrian _Wiwaxia_, _Canadia_, and _Marrella_ suggest a prismatic
color effect, coincident with the first appearance of eyes in the
fossil record. (See December 1998 _Discover_ ).  Note: all of these
studies were conducted by Andrew Parker. So while a Messel beetle with
a decipherable color pattern doesn't exactly come as a shock, it is a
pleasure to read that Mr. Parker's work restoring color to fossil
invertebrates goes on.

> The specimen is a "paleontological Rosetta stone" said Andrew
> Parker, lead researcher behind the find, and evolutionary biologist
> at the University of Oxford in England. The fossil beetle may be the
> key to analyzing and predicting the color of other well-preserved
> invertebrate fossils, fish scales and even bird and dinosaur
> feathers, that have not retained any original coloration, he said.

It has been suggested that fossilized _Sinosauropteryx_ and
Caudipteryx_ feathers and Liaoning insect fossils reveal pigment
patterns (perhaps resulting from fossil preservation of the durable
protein, melanin). Such fossils may reveal where dark spots, stripes,
and countershading were, but not the spectral colors which would have
also been present in the living animals.

Luis Rey probably has seen lots of unpublished full color feathered
dinosaur fossils. That would explain how he knows what colors to paint
them!  ;^)

- -------Ralph W. Miller III
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