Re: Repost

[NEIL CLARK <NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk>]

Ray wrote:
 
> What are the chances that some of the pigments might be long lived and 
> available in the rock matrix around some fossils. I have no good idea if 
> any pigments are longer lived than chlorophyll, xanthophyll, carotene and 
> the like but someone may know. I am reminded of the kid? that found skin 
> impressions in digs where the bone folks hafd ignored or missed the 
> impressions. Could remnants, no necessarily visible, tell of color in 
> some instances?
> 

I know that colour banding in bivalves and gastropods has been 
recorded as far back as the Devonian.  I have also looked at the 
preservation of colour in Pleistogene gastropods from New Zealand, 
but have found that the proteins producing the colour have decomposed 
leaving only a shaddow where once there was colour.  My part of the 
study was to look at the animals using UV light (both living and 
fossil), but a search for the 'pigment' was also made.  I will try 
and find out what the results were.  I think it was published in 
Science or Nature last year.

Neil

Neil Clark
Curator of Palaeontology
Hunterian Museum
University of Glasgow
email: NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk

Mountains are found in erogenous zones.
(Geological Howlers - ed. WDI Rolfe)