The oldest colors in the geological record are bright pink pigments from about 1.1 billion years ago, according to researchers.

Fossilized pigment granules have enabled scientists to deduce the colors of long-extinct organisms, including dinosaurs.

The world's oldest known synthetic pigment—Egyptian blue—was created about 5,000 years ago.

From dragon's blood to bone black, explore a timeline of pigments used throughout history, including each pigment's composition, preparation methods, and uses.

Cow urine, cuttlefish ink, and burned white lead were among the substances used as pigments throughout history.

Incinerated skeletons, animal blood, and fermented animal waste were among the ingredients used to make the pigments in some of art history's most famous paintings.

Violet is the rarest color in nature because it is the most energetically demanding visible light for pigments to reflect and for nanostructures to scatter.

An analysis of fossilized reefs from northern Africa and Germany suggests that shallow water corals and photosynthetic algae formed the mutualistic partnership seen today between 419 and 359 million years ago.

Creating a perfect red pigment that is vivid, durable, and nontoxic is likely impossible.

Lead, arsenic, uranium, and other toxic elements were once used in pigments for producing vibrant colors.

Not all colored materials can become pigments—the process of grinding materials down into smaller particles may destroy the color-producing molecules.

Synchrotron radiation has revealed the fur color of creatures millions of years old

Organic pigments can be made in a lab or in nature—the term indicates the presence of carbon-hydrogen bonds, not their source.

Billion-year-old Arctic fossils suggest Earth had fungi far earlier than previously thought

The oldest DNA recovered so far is 2 million years old

The world's oldest isolated water is about 1.6 billion years old and has a musty, sulfuric odor.

The first appearance of bioluminescence was at least 540 million years ago

Flowers have been around for 123 million years

The pharmaceutical industry evolved, in part, from the discovery of synthetic dyes

Green algae have lived on Earth for about 1 billion years, roughly twice as long as the first plants.

Blood can be blue, green, magenta, or transparent due to differences in the oxygen-carrying respiratory pigments they contain.

Paleontologists apply rules about rock layering, fossilization, and radioactivity to date geological samples

Flamingos get their pink color from pigments in their food, but they cannot be any color because their bodies cannot process every type of pigment.

The world's most expensive blue pigment, ultramarine blue, is made from lapis lazuli—rocks found mostly in the remote mountains of Afghanistan.

Evidence suggests the first cells on Earth were bacteria

A cave painting might be the oldest illustrated story ever recorded

The earliest evidence of cancer was found in a 1.7-million-year-old fossil—discovered in the toe of an ancestor of modern-day humans.

Some organisms' colors come from structural color—tiny structures that distinctly scatter different colors of light, eliminating some while reinforcing others that become visible.

Starting with red, colorful objects will appear to lose their colors the deeper they are submerged because water scatters light, reducing the amount available to reflect off objects and be observed.

View a gallery of biofluorescent animals, which contain cells that emit various colors when exposed to ultraviolet light.

Ground-up Egyptian mummies were used to create a brown pigment—mummy brown—and eaten by Europeans who considered it medicinal for centuries.

Fossils suggest tardigrades developed cryptobiosis more than 180 million years ago

The Forbes Pigment Collection contains samples of over 3,000 pigments, which are used as reference materials to distinguish original artwork from restorations and forgeries.

Every organism on Earth evolved from a single cell—the last universal common ancestor—which lived about 4.2 billion years ago, research suggests.

The history of Earth's breathable atmosphere, made possible by photosynthetic bacteria

A four-billion-year-old meteorite reignited the debate about life on Mars

Water is naturally tinted with a slight blue, but sediments and organics can alter its color

In the early 2000s, the average color of the universe was determined by averaging the visible light from 200,000 galaxies, yielding a light beige dubbed 'cosmic latte.'

Because it is observed in organisms that are not closely related, biofluorescence is thought to have emerged independently many times in nature—over 100 in fish alone.

Niagara’s bedrock holds 440-million-year-old coral fossils

Because various climate factors can affect the abundance of isotopes preserved in materials within the geologic record, these substances can serve as proxies for ancient climate conditions.

When processing light, the brain can perceive colors with no natural wavelength

A 37.41 carat, bicolor diamond likely formed from two distinct geological processes

Solutions of bioluminescent bacteria can create FOMO-inducing living art

Watch how the rich blue pigment YInMn, also known as MasBlue, is created from three silver metals: yttrium, indium, and manganese.

Santa Barbara's Channel Islands revealed the oldest skeletal remains in North America

'Watermelon snow'—patches of pink, orange, and red in snow—is the result of extremophilic green algae that thrive in extremely frigid conditions and take the shape of red spheres in winter.

Nicknamed 'corpse crystals,' vivianite can grow on dead bodies if phosphate from decomposing remains combines with iron and water.

Scientists can determine Earth's past environmental conditions by analyzing sediment cores—accumulated layers of mud and remains of charcoal, pollen, plants, algae, and other organic material.

A timeline of human fossil discoveries

The 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for discovering and developing uses for green fluorescent protein—a biomolecule found in some Pacific Northwest jellyfish.