10-Million-Year-Old Snake Revealed in Living Color

The fossilized remains of a snake that lived 10 million years ago don't look very colorful to the naked eye today. Though the pigment grains held within the snake's cells were long gone when scientists discovered the fossil, the cell shapes resembled several types of pigment cells in modern snakes that contain various kinds of color information. Matching the ancient and modern cell shapes allowed researchers to use modern snake color cell data as a road map.