Fossil Moth Still Shows Its Colors | The Institute for Creation Research

Fossil Moth Still Shows Its Colors

Many butterflies and moths have colors that show a metallic sheen. That sheen occurs because the refracting material in their wings and bodies is spread out in layers precisely as thin as the wavelengths of the light they refract.

Researchers recently found these delicate structures in moth fossils from Germany that are supposedly 47 million years old. But how could something that delicate last that long?

The authors of the study, which appeared in the online journal PLoS Biology, reported that the nanostructure of the tiny moth wing scales was still in very good condition, enabling the researchers to reconstruct their metallic coloration.

The report included electron micrographs of "bead-like spacers" less than one millionth of a meter in size. These spacers specify the tiny distances required to refract light. The "multilayer reflector" was still intact, almost like the moths were alive yesterday.1

 

But who would expect that such detailed structures—so fine that researcher need an electron microscope to see them—persisted for a million years? If rock and soil covered the fossils over that length of time, then these delicate moth scale structures should have flattened long ago. However, if there wasn't much rock or soil on top of them, then oxygen gas would have reached them more easily and oxidized the scales, obliterating all their structure.

And the study authors examined original, not mineralized, biochemical constituents of the scales. They wrote:

Electron dispersive X-ray analyses demonstrate that the fossil scales are organically preserved: they comprise predominantly carbon and there is no evidence for replacement of the preserved tissue by authigenic [formed where found] minerals.1

Either flattened from pressure or obliterated by chemical reactions, the delicate and tiny moth wing fossil structures should be long gone if they are as old as the researchers claim. However, since they are still here and still identifiable, it makes more sense to say that they are only thousands of years old.

Reference

  1. McNamara, M. E. et al. 2011. Fossilized Biophotonic Nanostructures Reveal the Original Colors of 47-Million-Year-Old Moths. PLoS Biology. 9 (11): e1001200.

Image credit: Copyright © 2011 McNamara et al, PLoS Biology 9 (11): e1001200 (open access article, usage does not imply endorsement).

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on January 5, 2012.

The Latest
ACTS & FACTS
Pervasive Genome Functionality Destroys the Myth of Junk DNA
In 2001, the first rough draft of the human genome was published in a collaborative effort between private industry and the public sector.1,2...

NEWS
Happy Labor Day 2025
“For we are laborers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:9) Labor Day was...

ACTS & FACTS
The Age of Reptiles Myth
We hear about the Age of Reptiles, also called the Age of Dinosaurs, almost as early as we can understand the idea. Even kindergarteners might be taught...

ACTS & FACTS
The Tiktaalik Missing Link Myth
In 2004, the paleontological community—and the world—was presented with what many evolutionists considered to be a dyedin- the-wool missing...

ACTS & FACTS
Archaeopteryx, Myth of a Transitional Fossil
In 1860, one year after the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a wonderfully preserved fossil feather was discovered in...

ACTS & FACTS
Busting the Myth about Lucy
by Brian Thomas, Ph.D., and Chris Rupe, Ph.D.* Most folks consider our ape ancestry as established science, with Lucy as the main link. However,...

ACTS & FACTS
Evolutionary Vestigial Features: Worse Than Myth, a Scam
Due to teachers’ influence during the formative years of young people’s lives, they can be a powerful force in spreading evolution to new...

ACTS & FACTS
Blind Cavefish Unmask the Convergent Evolution Myth
Within the ever-expanding theory of evolution, there is a system of specialized language designed to identify each major interpretative concept. Some...

ACTS & FACTS
A Booming Generation
And the king answered them roughly; and king Rehoboam forsook the counsel of the old men, and answered them after the advice of the young men.…And...

ACTS & FACTS
Darwin's Galápagos Finches: The Myth of Natural Selection
A group of birds known as Darwin’s finches (genus Geospiza) lives in the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean 600 miles west of Ecuador....