COLOR VISION IS 300 MILLION YEARS OLD
Vision, which consists of an optical system, receptors and image-processing capacity, has existed for at least 520 Myr. Except for the optical system, as in the calcified lenses of trilobite and ostracod arthropods, other parts of the visual system are not usually preserved in the fossil record, because the soft tissue of the eye and the brain decay rapidly after death, such as within 64 days and 11 days, respectively.
A fish eye from a primitive time when Earth was but one single continent has yielded evidence of color vision dating back at least 300 million years. Analyzing the fossilized remains of a fish called Acanthodes bridgei that lived long before the dinosaurs, scientists discovered light-sensing “rod” and “cone” eye cells — the oldest ever found. being the first discovery of vertebrate retinal fossils. The remains had been preserved under a thin coating of phosphate, analysis of the tissue provides the first record of mineralised rods and cones in a fossil. YAY!!!
Reference: Tanaka et al. 2014. Mineralized rods and cones suggest colour vision in a 300 Myr-old fossil fish. Nature Communications
Optical photographs of the Carboniferous fish A. bridgei: Complete dorsoventrally compressed specimen; the head, including a pair of black/dark brown eyes, is lower left. (b,c) Details of the head region and the right eye.
