Researchers have discovered the true colors of a group of fossil insects trapped in amber in Myanmar some 99 million years ago.Ancient insects include cuckoo wasps, water flies and beetles, all of which come in metallic blues, purples and greens.
Nature is visually rich, but fossils rarely retain evidence of an organism’s original color.Still, paleontologists are now looking for ways to pick out colors from well-preserved fossils, whether they be dinosaurs and flying reptiles or ancient snakes and mammals.
Understanding the color of extinct species is actually very important because it can tell researchers a lot about animal behavior.For example, color can be used to attract mates or warn predators, and even help regulate temperature.Learning more about them can also help researchers learn more about ecosystems and environments.
In the new study, a research team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology (NIGPAS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences looked at 35 individual amber samples that contained well-preserved insects.The fossils were found in an amber mine in northern Myanmar.
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“Amber is mid-Cretaceous, about 99 million years old, dating back to the golden age of dinosaurs,” lead author Chenyan Cai said in a release.”It’s essentially resin produced by ancient conifers that grow in a rainforest environment. Plants and animals trapped in the thick resin are preserved, some with lifelike fidelity.”
Colors in nature generally fall into three broad categories: bioluminescence, pigments, and structural colors.Amber fossils have found preserved structural colours that are often intense and quite striking (including metallic colours) and are produced by microscopic light-scattering structures located on the animal’s head, body and limbs.
The researchers polished the fossils using sandpaper and diatomaceous earth powder.Some amber is ground into very thin flakes so that the insects are clearly visible, and the surrounding amber matrix is ​​almost transparent in bright light.Images included in the study were edited to adjust brightness and contrast.
“The type of color preserved in fossil amber is called structural color,” Yanhong Pan, co-author of the study, said in a statement.”Surface nanostructures scatter specific wavelengths of light,” “producing very intense colors,” Pan said, adding that this “mechanism is responsible for many of the colors we know about in our daily lives.”
Of all the fossils, cuckoo wasps are particularly striking, with metallic blue-green, yellow-red, violet and green hues on their head, thorax, abdomen and legs.According to the study, these color patterns closely matched the cuckoo wasps alive today.Other standouts include blue and purple beetles and metallic dark green soldier flies.
Using electron microscopy, the researchers demonstrated that the fossil amber has “well-preserved light-scattering exoskeleton nanostructures.”
“Our observations strongly suggest that some amber fossils may preserve the same colors as the insects displayed when they were alive some 99 million years ago,” the study’s authors wrote.”Furthermore, this is confirmed by the fact that metallic blue-greens are frequently found in extant cuckoo wasps.”
Fermin Koop is a journalist from Buenos Aires, Argentina.He holds an MA in Environment and Development from the University of Reading, UK, specialising in environmental and climate change journalism.