In fossilized feathers looking for colors

2008/09/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Zoologia
• Paleontologia
• Arkeologia

In a hundred thousand year old bird feather they have been able to distinguish colorful and colorless areas at Yale University in Conneticut. In fact, looking at the electron microscope they looked at some of the structures seen in the feathers and saw that the fossil feather in their hands had dark and light lines.

The structures studied were stacked sausage structures. Until now it was thought that they were remnants of bacteria that fed on feathers, but the Yale University team realized that these structures did not appear homogeneously throughout the pen, but in layers or stripes. So they thought that they were not bacteria but remnants of melanosomes that gave color to the pen, organelles that store melanin in the cells.

They also analyzed the feathers of the current birds to check it, and have verified that yes, in the current feathers also appear structures of the same form in the colored areas.