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Egg pigmentation probably has an early Archosaurian origin

Nature volume 570, pages E43–E45 (2019)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 19 June 2019

The Original Article was published on 31 October 2018

ARISING FROM J. Wiemann et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0646-5 (2019)

Colours have crucial roles in the lives of organisms, from camouflage to mate and pollinator attraction. Although the colours of animals known only from fossils were once thought to be unknowable, recent advances have enabled some to be reconstructed, with important implications for their (Palaeo) ecology and evolution1. A recent paper2 used Raman spectroscopy to show evidence of preservation of the two colour-producing pigments in avian eggs (biliverdin and protoporphyrin IX) in fossil dinosaur eggs. The authors used these data to infer the colours of these eggs and, based on their presence and absence in extinct and extant clades, to suggest that colourful eggs had a single evolutionary origin in the Eumaniraptora, or bird-like dinosaurs2. This is clearly an exciting finding, and the potential detection of these pigments could indeed enable considerable advances in our understanding of the evolution of egg pigmentation. However, the presence of these two pigments in white avian eggs and crocodile (non-eumaniraptoran) eggs draws their conclusions into question.

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Fig. 1: Maximum likelihood ancestral reconstruction tree showing probabilities of pigment deposition (green sections of nodes) in eggs of archosaurs.

Data availability

All data were taken from Fig. 1 of Wiemann et al.2 with the exception of the data point on Siamese crocodiles, which was based on data from Mikšík et al.10.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from FWO grant G007117N and AFOSR grant FA9550-1-18-0447.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Department, Evolution and Optics of Nanostructures Group, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium

    Matthew D. Shawkey & Liliana D’Alba

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  1. Matthew D. Shawkey
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  2. Liliana D’Alba
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Contributions

M.D.S. and L.D. conceived the study, L.D. analysed the data, M.D.S. wrote the manuscript, and both authors edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Matthew D. Shawkey.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Figure 1 from Wiemann et al.2, with red lines indicating location of wavenumbers analysed using Raman imaging.

Both white and coloured eggs have peaks at 1,166 cm−1, and coloured eggs have valleys at 1,350 cm−1.

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Shawkey, M.D., D’Alba, L. Egg pigmentation probably has an early Archosaurian origin. Nature 570, E43–E45 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1282-4

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