The world's oldest color was bright pink – Brinkwire

This is the oldest color ever seen on Earth.

Bright pink pigments, estimated to be 1.1 billion years old, were extracted from deep rocks of the Sahara Desert in Africa.

It is the oldest color ever seen in the geological register, and it was produced by organisms inhabiting an ancient ocean long gone.

"Bright pink pigments are the molecular fossils of chlorophyll organisms living in an ancient ocean that has long since disappeared," said Dr. Gueneli of the Australian National University of Science Research. Earth, which led the study.

Pigments extracted from the marine black shales of the Taoudeni Basin in Mauritania, were more than half a billion years older than earlier discoveries of pigments.

"Fossils range from blood red to deep purple in their concentrated form, and bright pink when diluted."

Dr. Gueneli discovered the molecules as part of his doctoral studies.

The researchers milled millennia rocks in powder, before extracting and badyzing molecules of ancient organisms

"Accurate badysis of ancient pigments confirmed that tiny cyanobacteria dominated the base d e the food chain in a billion years ago, which is why animals did not exist at the time, "said Dr. Jochen Brocks of UNA, researcher lead at the head of the ANU, about the emergence of large active organisms. Algae, though still microscopic, are a thousand times larger than cyanobacteria and a much richer food source, says Dr. Brocks. "The cyanobacterial oceans began to disappear about 650 million years ago, when algae began to spread rapidly to provide the energy necessary for the evolution of complex ecosystems, where the large animals, including humans, could thrive on Earth. "