The colour of prehistoric animals is almost impossible to determine, because fossilisation does not preserve it. But under exceptional circumstances, colour patterns survive. In the Crato Formation in north-east Brazil, Sam Heads of the University of Manchester, UK, and his colleagues found a fossil of a type of carnivorous insect known as an antlion, in which the colour pattern is beautifully preserved.
The Crato Formation, which dates from the lower Cretaceous between 125 and 112 million years ago, is known for its fossils, and colour patterns have survived on other insect wings previously found there. 鈥淏ut it is rare to find the pattern preserved in such clarity,鈥� says Heads. 鈥淭he wings are oriented in such a way as allows us to reconstruct the pattern on both wings as it would have appeared in life.鈥�
Quite how colour patterns are preserved is a mystery, but rapid burial and oxygen-free conditions are thought to be important.
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The discovery of the antlion, a previously unknown species named Baisopardus cryptohymen, raises a question about its feeding habits. Modern antlions are best known for their larvae鈥檚 habit of trapping and devouring ants by concealing themselves at the bottom of small pits. But since ants evolved some 10 million years after this antlion died, the hungry young insect must have feasted on something else (Palaeontology, vol 48, p 1409).
