December 17, 2005 from New Scientist:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg18825304.600

The colour of prehistoric animals is almost impossible to determine,
because fossilisation does not preserve it. But under exceptional
circumstances, colour patterns survive. In the Crato Formation in
north-east Brazil, Sam Heads of the University of Manchester, UK, and
his colleagues found a fossil of a type of carnivorous insect known as
an antlion, in which the colour pattern is beautifully preserved.

The Crato Formation, which dates from the lower Cretaceous between 125
and 112 million years ago, is known for its fossils, and colour
patterns have survived on other insect wings previously found there.
"But it is rare to find the pattern preserved in such clarity," says
Heads. "The wings are oriented in such a way as allows us to
reconstruct the pattern on both wings as it would have appeared in life."

Quite how colour patterns are preserved is a mystery, but rapid burial
and oxygen-free conditions are thought to be important.

The discovery of the antlion, a previously unknown species named
Baisopardus cryptohymen, raises a question about its feeding habits.
Modern antlions are best known for their larvae's habit of trapping
and devouring ants by concealing themselves at the bottom of small
pits. But since ants evolved some 10 million years after this antlion
died, the hungry young insect must have feasted on something else
(Palaeontology, vol 48, p 1409).