The earliest color dates of the Earth date back more than a billion years

Well, not exactly, but it's the oldest color in the world, according to new research.

The researchers extracted pigment from fossils of bacteria preserved in rocks under the Sahara desert in Mauritania, West Africa. Inside these bacteria, scientists have discovered chlorophyll – a pigment currently used by plants for photosynthesis – that dates back to about 1.1 billion years ago. It's about 600 million years older than similar chlorophyll fossils found previously, the scientists reported in the new study. [In Images: The Oldest Fossils on Earth]

Their findings suggest that cyanobacteria, bacteria that survive sunlight, appeared much earlier than seaweed, which was found about 650 million years ago. According to the study, bacteria have probably dominated the ancient oceans of the Earth for hundreds of millions of years.

Chlorophyll is what gives modern plants their green color, although the chlorophyll fossilized in cyanobacterial samples is dark red and dark purple. , the scientists reported.

When they sprayed the fossils to badyze the bacteria molecules, the researchers distilled the colors to find a brilliant rose. This colorful vestige suggests that ancient sun-eating organisms cast a pink tinge on a long-gone ocean, said in a statement the senior author of the study, Nur Gueneli, of the School of Earth Science Research of the Australian National University. ] Chlorophyll this ancient is preserved only in exceptional circumstances, Jochen Brocks, a co-author of the study, badociate professor at the School of Earth Sciences Research of the ANU, said Live Science in an e-mail. First, dead organic matter – a proliferation of cyanobacteria, for example – flows rapidly on the seabed. Once there, it must be isolated from any exposure to oxygen, which causes decomposition, and then the rock that contains the material must remain in one piece for a billion years, said Brocks

. who lived more than a billion years ago? "Wonderful surprise," said Brocks. Even algae, one of the oldest life forms, were absent or rare by the time these bacteria swallowed chlorophyll, researchers wrote in the study

a few hundred million years ago. years before the algae began to multiply, Finally, forming the basis of a food web that would eventually fuel the evolution of large animals, Brocks told Live Science

But until the Appearance of algae and more complex organisms, the planet belonged to the bacteria.

This was truly a foreign world, "said Brocks.

The findings were published online July 9 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Original article on Live Science .