Most biological colors of past geological ages are lost to time, existing only in the imagination's eye. But one alga's delicate reddish hue has survived intact, appearing in much the same tones as it did 150 million years ago.
Called Solenopora jurassica, the algae is responsible for fossils unearthed in Britain (where they're dubbed Beetroot Stones) and France. According to a new study, their coloration comes from natural pigments in the algae suffused by the element boron.
"It is quite exciting to find anything colorful from organisms that existed at a time when dinosaurs ruled the world," said Klaus Wolkenstein, a chemist at Austria's Johannes Kepler University and co-author of the new analysis, published October 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wolkenstein cautioned that fossilization may still have altered S. jurassica's pigmentation, changing its hue to something less than exactly original. But it's still close, and no other boron-containing biological pigments have ever been found, making S. jurassica's color truly unique.
Asked whether such pigmentation might be engineered into a modern algae, Wolkenstein preferred to look for it in nature. Perhaps similar pigments still exist in modern red algae and have just been overlooked -- a 150 million-year-old color hidden in front of our eyes.
Images: 1) Solenopora jurassica./Klaus Wolkenstein. 2) A Jurassic-era sea lily, its pigmentation also preserved for 150 million years./Klaus Wolkenstein.
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Citation: "Boron-containing organic pigments from a Jurassic red alga." By Klaus Wolkenstein, Jürgen H. Gross, and Heinz Falk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 43, October 26, 2010.
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