Melanin pigment preserved in 160-million-year-old Jurassic fossils

摘要

Researchers have long relied on indirect methods to identify the coloring pigment melanin in the fossil record, suggesting poor preservation of the pigment over geologic time. For example, researchers reconstructed the plumage patterns of dinosaurs through visual evidence of organelle-like structures bearing melanin pigments. Keely Glass et al. (pp. 10218-10223) describe a method for exploring melanin in 160-million-year-old fossils of cephalopod ink sacs preserved in Jurassic-age deposits in Wiltshire and Dorset in the United Kingdom.