Valentina and Maria publish a new paper on fossil melanosomes

22 Mar 2021

Here we use taphonomic experiments to show that the chemistry of melanosomes from different tissues converges during maturation – in particular, Cu signals become more homogeneous.

Fossils with uniform or widespread elevation in Cu were probably diagenetically altered and don’t preserve original melanosome chemistries. This is potentially a new way of testing whether fossils are relatively unaltered in terms of their chemistry.

The study was published today in the journal Geology.

Rossi, V., Webb, S.M., McNamara, M., 2021. Maturation experiments reveal bias in the chemistry of fossil melanosomes. Geology, 49. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1130/G48696.1.