Scientists come to discover the world's oldest color

According to research from the National University of Australia, the oldest colors of the geological record have been discovered – and these are bright pink pigments aged 1.1 billion years old. deep rocks of the Sahara Desert in Africa.

Pigments taken from marine black shales in the Taoudeni Basin in Mauritania, West Africa, are more than half a billion years older than previous pigment discoveries .

"Bright pink pigments are the molecular fossils of chlorophyll that have been produced by ancient photosynthetic organisms inhabiting a long-lost ocean," says Dr. Nur Gueneli of the Australian National University ( ANU).

Fossils range from blood red to dark purple in their concentrated form, and to bright pink when diluted. The discovery was announced in PNAS magazine.

Dr. Gueneli discovered the molecules as part of his PhD studies. ANU led the research with the support of Geoscience Australia and researchers in the United States and Japan.

Researchers ground millenium rocks in powder, before extracting and analyzing molecules of ancient organisms.

"The accurate analysis of ancient pigments confirmed that tiny cyanobacteria dominated the base of the food chain in the oceans a billion years ago, which explains why the animals did not exist, "says Dr. Gueneli.

Jochen Brocks, senior researcher and principal investigator at ANU, says that the emergence of large, active organisms would likely have been limited by a limited supply of larger food particles, such as algae.

"Algae, although still microscopic, are a thousand times larger than cyanobacteria and a much richer food source," says Dr. Brocks of the School of Science Research. from the land of the ANU.

"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 large animals, including humans, could flourish on Earth.