Leatherback turtle, ichthyosaur, and mosasaurSTEFAN SØLBERG
Now, Johan Lindgren from Lund University has taken the study of prehistoric colors for a swim. His team has discovered traces of melanosomes, and the dark pigments they contain, in the skins of three fossilized marine reptiles: an ancient leatherback turtle; a dolphin-shaped ichthyosaur; and a mosasaur, an aquatic, flipper-limbed relative of monitor lizards. The results are published today (January 8) in Nature.
“It’s great to see that evidence for pigmentation has been found in other groups of fossil organisms and in other fossil tissue types,” said Nicholas Edwards from the University of Manchester, who was not involved in the research. It shows that such pigments are “not necessarily limited to a narrow set of preservational conditions,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Like other groups, ...
