In a new paper published by a team of researchers at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, the group identified the true colors of three ancient insects that were preserved in amber—an incredibly rare find for paleontologists.
Insects from the mid-Cretaceous period preserved in amber were found in present-day northern Myanmar.Insects from the mid-Cretaceous period preserved in amber were found in present-day northern Myanmar.Fossils can tell scientists a lot about prehistoric life, but they can’t say everything. When it comes to understanding our animal and plant forebears, there’s a lot we’ll probably never learn from fossils, like what colors ancient animals were. However, in rare cases, researchers get lucky.
“The way that the color is preserved in these things is really remarkable,” says James Lamsdell, a University of West Virginia paleobiologist who was not involved in the research. “There have been reports of color in the fossil record before, but often what we’re looking at is not the true color, because it’s been changed by the fossilization process.”
Scientists can speculate as to what evolutionary pressures drove all these different insects to iridescence, but there’s no way to know for sure.The researchers say these images were edited in Photoshop “to adjust brightness and contrast” but that the colors themselves were not changed or edited.