Coloured fossil snail shells (left) and a snail shell from modern times (large specimen on the right) Photo: Klaus Wolkenstein
Coloured fossil snail shells ( left ) and a snail shell from modern times (large specimen on the right) Photo: Klaus Wolkenstein Researchers provide world's first evidence of intact polyene pigments in fossils. Snail shells are often colourful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on the other hand, are usually pale and inconspicuous because the pigments are very sensitive and have already decomposed. Residues of ancient colour patterns are therefore very rare. This makes this new discovery by researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW) all the more astonishing: they found pigments in twelve-million-year-old fossilised snail shells. These are the world's first pigments from the chemical group of polyenes that have been preserved almost unchanged and found in fossils.
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