Fossils can give us a general picture of an animal, but finding out what exact colors these animals were is a far more difficult task. Now, for the first time ever, scientists have successfully identified the colors of ancient marine reptiles.
The three reptiles in question are a 55-million-year-old leatherback turtle, an 85-million-year-old mosasaur, and a 190-million-year-old ichthyosaur. All three, it seems, were at least partially dark in color. Scientists believe the dark colors helped with thermoregulation and camouflage.
"This is fantastic! When I started studying at Lund University in 1993, the film Jurassic Park had just been released, and that was one of the main reasons why I got interested in biology and palaeontology," said Johan Lindgren from Lund University in Sweden, team leader of the group that studied the fossils for pigments.
"Then, 20 years ago, it was unthinkable that we would ever find biological remains from animals that have been extinct for many millions of years, but now we are there and I am proud to be a part of it."
Modern-day imaging shows the leatherback turtle and the mosasaur to have dark backs and light underbellies, while the sperm whale-like ichthyosaur sports an all-dark look.
The scientists found that tiny microbodies in the fossils are not the remnants of the bacteria that decayed the corpses as previously thought, and are actually fossilized cell organs containing the animal's pigment.
"Our results really are amazing. The pigment melanin is almost unbelievably stable. Our discovery enables us to make a journey through time and to revisit these ancient reptiles using their own biomolecules. Now, we can finally use sophisticated molecular and imaging techniques to learn what these animals looked like and how they lived," said Per Uvdal, one of the co-authors of the study from the MAX IV Laboratory.
You can read the full published study detailing the findings in the journal Nature.