Scientists discover the world's oldest biological colors in the Sahara Desert

According to a discovery that they made Tuesday, pink pigments were produced by simple microscopic organisms called cyanobacteria more than 1.1 billion years ago. 500 million years older than previous discoveries of color pigments.

This makes the samples around "fifteen times older" than the Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur specimens. es, according to Jochen Brocks, principal investigator at the Australian National University.
<! –

->

The Earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old and the researchers said that the latest discovery revealed why more sophisticated animal and plant life has emerged than there are 600 million years ago. # 39; years.
Previous research has argued that low levels of oxygen in the atmosphere hinder the evolution of complicated life forms, but the discovery of cyanobacteria at such an early date suggests that organisms were evading sources of oxygen. More abundant food such as seaweed. The cyanobacterial oceans began to disappear about 650 million years ago, when algae began to spread rapidly to provide the greatest number of cyanobacteria. the explosion of energy necessary for the evolution of complex ecosystems, where large animals, including humans, could thrive on Earth.

Scientists discovered the samples accidentally when an oil company that was drilling in the Taoudeni basin in West Africa sent them

Pigments are fossilized relics of chlorophyll, a chemical that allows microscopic plants and life forms to turn light into energy.

pink pigment that they discovered would initially appeared blue-green to the human eye.

The results were published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

See also