Psychedelic-Colored Insects Flew Ancient Skies

At least one moth 50 million years ago sported a yellow-green hue highlighted by blue, black and green-cyan accents, a team of researchers concludes.

The fashion forward moth, described in the latest PLoS Biology, represents the oldest known moth for which the original colors have been determined.

The discovery, made in Germany, could help scientists learn the colors of a wide variety of long-extinct creatures, including birds, fishes, and other insects, and shed light on color's function and evolution.

"We can work out what they looked like and what they used the colors for," Yale researcher Maria McNamara said in a press release.

Fossils rarely preserve evidence of original color, so we've only known the Dinosaur Era and other prehistoric times in black and white, although artists have taken creative liberties in adding color to drawings.

McNamara and her team, however, have figured out a way to tease color information out of fossils. Coloration, in turn, suggests how the long-dead individuals may have behaved and communicated, since color can play a role in both of those things.

The scientists figured out the colors by using electron microscopy and other techniques to examine fossilized scales of daytime moths that lived around 50 million years ago. The moths lived at what is now the Messel oil shale pit near Frankfurt, where numerous other high-quality fossils have been unearthed.

Evidence from anatomical details preserved in the scales helped establish the structural color of the moths' forewings, which you can see in the recreation image. McNamara says that structural colors are the brightest colors in nature -- purer and more intense than chemical pigments. Tissue design generates structural colors by scattering light.

The researchers believe the ancient day moth's colors served defensive purposes by either warning off predators, or serving as camoflauge.

Read more at Discovery News