Why Is Pink the World's Oldest Color?

Before the oceans were blue, they were pink. Learn about the cyanobacteria that caused this coloration in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/earths-oldest-color-was-pink.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, we all know that the
ocean is blue, or sometimes a nice blue green, or
during storms and inky blue black. But this wasn't always
the case. Prehistoric oceans were not blue like they are today.

(00:25):
The scientists have discovered that ancient oceans were actually a
rosy hue, making pink the world's oldest known color created
by living things. The researchers, who published their findings in
the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences back
in found the pink pigment in bacteria fossils that date

(00:46):
back one point one billion years in what's now part
of the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, West Africa, but was
once a vast ocean. The fossils were of tiny cyana bacteria,
which are single celled organisms that are thought to have
survived on sunlight, using an ancient form of chlorophyll to
capture the light energy and convert it into food. These

(01:10):
cyana bacteria were the dominant life form in Earth's oceans
for eons. They seem to even predate algae, which have
only been traced back about six hundred and fifty million years.
The bacteria were so small and so prevalent that the
researchers think they actually prevented larger life forms from evolving
for hundreds of millions of years because there are thousand

(01:32):
times smaller than even tiny algae. It wasn't until algae
started taking over that there was enough of a food
source for larger, more active organisms to thrive. But what
made these little microbes think pink? The fossilized chlorophyll inside
the bacteria was concentrated into dark red and purple hues,

(01:55):
But in pulverizing and studying the bacteria molecules, the researchers
found the pigment to be a brilliant, bright pink, which
means that when diluted by water or soil, it would
have lent a pink cast to earth and sea. This
is unlike modern chlorophyllm, which today is the bright green
compound that lets plants turn light into food and gives

(02:18):
most plants, from trees to grass to cabbage their green color.
While it is rare for ancient chlorophyll to be preserved,
these samples were probably formed when a bloom of Cyana
bacteria quickly sank to the sea floor, where the environment
was lacking the oxygen molecules that bolster decay. Once they sank,

(02:41):
the microbes eventually fossilized, and the rock they became part
of remained motionless and in one piece for a billion
years for the researchers to make this discovery. Today's episode
is based on the article Earth's oldest color was pink
on how stuff works dot Com, written by Lori l. D.

(03:03):
Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio in
partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it is
produced by Tyler Play four more podcasts from my heart
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