[ad_1]
Researchers discovered ancient pink pigments in 1.1 billion-year-old rocks at the bottom of the Sahara Desert in the Taoudeni Basin in Mauritania, West Africa, which in turn makes the oldest colors of the geological register.
According to Dr. Nur Gueneli, who discovered the pigments as part of his doctoral studies at the National University of Australia, the bright pink colors have more than 500 million years of more than the oldest known pigments.
To uncover the pigments, the researchers crushed rocks a billion years in powder, then extracted and analyzed the molecules of ancient organisms that were found there.
When diluted, the old pigments appear in bright pink. But when they are concentrated, the fossils can go from a blood red to a dark purple, she says.
Implications for Ancient Life
The earliest color of the Earth was not the only discovery to come out of the sea shale found under the Sahara.
"The precise analysis of the pigments ancient confirmed that tiny cyanobacteria dominated the base of the food chain in the oceans a billion years ago, which helps to explain why animals did not exist at the time, "he said. said Dr. Gueneli in the press release.
According to the principal investigator, Dr. Jochen Brocks, associate professor at UNA, the limited supply of large food particles like algae in these ancient oceans has presumably curbed the emergence of large, microscopic active organisms
are a thousand times larger than cyanobacteria and constitute a much richer food source, "Dr. Brocks said in his statement.
The Oceans cyanobactér "They started disappearing about 650 million years ago," said Brock, when the algae began to spread rapidly. This seaweed provided "the explosion of energy necessary for the evolution of complex ecosystems, where large animals, including humans, could thrive on Earth," he said. .
Source link
