That’s a really good question because erm, it’s possible when you look at the fossils that the colour you see could have been generated during the fossilisation process, an artefact, and they may not be related to the original colour of the insect at all.
Erm, however when we look at the fossil beetles using powerful electro-microscopes, we find the exact same evidence of colour erm, that we see in these modern beetles. You see these modern beetles, the colour we see it’s not made by pigments, it’s made by very fine layers. And these layers act like mirrors, so they reflect light erm, and they actually reflect light in such a way that we get a very pure, a very bright colour.