MAY 21, 2019
Researchers have for the first time detected
chemical traces of red pigment in an ancient fossil—an exceptionally
well-preserved mouse, not unlike today's field mice, that roamed the fields of
what is now the German village of Willershausen around 3 million years ago.
The study revealed that the extinct creature,
affectionately nicknamed "mighty mouse" by the authors, was dressed
in brown to reddish fur on its back and sides and had a tiny white tummy. The
results were published today in Nature Communications.
The international collaboration, led by
researchers at the University of Manchester in the U.K., used X-ray
spectroscopy and multiple imaging techniques to detect the delicate chemical
signature of pigments in this long-extinct mouse.
"Life on Earth has littered the fossil record with a wealth
of information that has only recently been accessible to science," says
Phil Manning, a professor at Manchester who co-led the study. "A suite of
new imaging techniques can
now be deployed, which permit us to peer deep into the chemical history of a
fossil organism and the processes that preserved its tissues. Where once we saw
simply minerals, now we gently unpick the 'biochemical ghosts' of long extinct
species."
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