Ancient bugs found in 50-million-year-old Indian amber

Most of the found species are completely new to science - We have complete, three-dimensionally preserved specimens that are 52 million years old and you can handle them almost like living ones”

More than 700 new species of ancient insect have been discovered in 50-million-year-old amber.

The discoveries come from some 150kg of amber produced by an ancient rainforest in India.

Scientists say in the journal PNAS that many insects are related to species from far-away corners of the world.

This means that, despite millions of years in isolation in the ocean, the region was a lot more biologically diverse than previously believed.

The amber, dubbed Cambay amber, was found in lignite mines in the Cambay Shale of the Indian state of Gujarat.

Jes Rust from the University of Bonn in Germany led an international team of researchers from India, Germany and the US. ....

Most of the recently discovered bugs also show links to modern insects as well as those that lived millions of years ago in different parts of the world, including Asia, Australia, and even South America. ...

Unlike other types of amber found in deposits in the north, the Indian amber is much softer. This unique property allowed the scientists to completely dissolve the amber using solvents - toluene and chloroform - and extract the ancient insects, plants and fungi.

via BBC News - Ancient bugs found in 50-million-year-old Indian amber.

 

A collection of beautifully preserved bees, ants, spiders and other small prehistoric creatures that lived 50 million years ago have been unearthed in a huge amber deposit in India.

Scientists said that the fossilised globules of tree resin have entombed a spectacular menagerie of insects that had survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and were living at a time before mammals had evolved.

The amber deposit is the first to be found in India and may be larger than the Baltic deposits – in Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Germany – which are the biggest in the world and have proved a rich source of the semi-precious gemstone for more than 200 years.

... "This is really outstanding. It's like getting a complete dinosaur out of the amber and being able to put it under the microscope," Professor Rust said. ...

The story of a prehistoric mosquito that had just dined on the blood of a dinosaur before being trapped in tree resin formed part of the 1993 film Jurassic Park, based on the book of the same name by Michael Crichton, where dinosaur DNA is recovered from the insect and used to bring the giant creatures back to life. However, Professor Rust said that the possibility of getting any genetic material from the insects trapped in the Indian amber is next to zero.

"You will never find ancient DNA in amber. It is completely destroyed and deteriorates after a couple of hundred thousand years. Jurassic Park is wonderful science fiction," he said.

Nevertheless, the scientists have already found more than 700 specimens trapped in the Indian amber. They are mostly insects, such as ants, bees and termites, but they also include spiders, mites and parts of plants. One species of ant belongs to a genus that is only found alive today in Australia. ...

via Independent

... Some animals that get trapped in amber include flies, ants, beetles, moths, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, termites, mayflies, lice, mites, gnats, bees, wasps, scorpions, cockroaches, grasshoppers, damselflies, butterflies, and fleas. Flies (order Diptera) are the most common inclusion in amber, making up 54% of all finds. Non-insect finds in amber include plants such as fir, cypress, juniper, pine, spruce, oaks, beech, maple, chestnut, magnolia, and cinnamon, palms, ferns, and mosses.

Some of the rarest finds in amber are inclusions that are neither plant nor insect: lizards, worms, spiders, frogs, crustaceans, mushrooms, mammal bones, feathers, and mammal hair. Larger animals, such as most mammals, are too big to get trapped in tree resin, easily stepping out of it even if they are stuck momentarily. Sometimes the resin makes contact with water before it forms into amber, and will be filled with inclusions of marine crustaceans. Altogether, about 1000 species of animals have been found in amber. ...

via wisegeek