https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xb97v/the-oldest-color-ever-discovered-is-11-billion-years-old > On Tuesday, a team of scientists from Australian National University announced that it had discovered the oldest colors ever seen in the geological record. The pigments, which ranged from red to purple and look pink when diluted, were discovered below the Sahara desert in north Africa. > A small caveat is needed here. Obviously, rocks existed on Earth more than 1.1 billion years ago and rocks have color. When the scientists refer to the oldest colors on Earth, they are referring to biological pigments—that is, the oldest color produced by living things.