Tag Archives: amber

The new fossil from the Cretaceous of Myanmar preserves large compound eyes, delicate mouthparts, and even gills. Cretapsara athanata, a modern-looking eubrachyuran crab in Burmese amber. Image credit: Luque et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj5689. True crabs (members of the infraorder Brachyura) are an iconic group of crustaceans whose remarkable diversity of …

Again with the accidental discoveries! It’s the third unexpected find within six weeks. This time, the good news was born from debris in a hunk of Dominican amber. The researchers were studying ants from the Miocene period, trapped in a piece of amber. A closer look at the “debris” inclusions, …

Eograminis balticus, a new species of grass found in a piece of 40-50-million-year-old amber, represents the first definite grass to be described from Baltic amber as well as the first fossil member of Arundinoideae, a subfamily of the widespread Poaceae family that includes cereal grasses, bamboos and many species found …

Found in a piece of mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar, the wonderfully-preserved male of Cretophengodes azari has a light organ on the abdomen which presumably served a defensive function. An artistic reconstruction of Cretophengodes azari; the larviform female in the background is reconstructed based on extant Phengodidae and Rhagophthalmidae beetles. …

A team of paleontologists from Oregon State University and the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has found a new genus and species of fossil angiosperm in the mid-Cretaceous amber deposits of Myanmar. Valviloculus pleristaminis, flower in lateral view. Image credit: Poinar, Jr. et al., doi: 10.17348/jbrit.v14.i2.1014. …

99-Million-Year-Old ‘Hell Ant’ Paleontologists have found trapped in a piece of Burmese amber a unique scene of a prehistoric ‘hell ant’ (subfamily Haidomyrmecinae) attacking a nymph of Caputoraptor elegans, an extinct cockroach relative. The ancient encounter presents some of the first direct evidence showing how the newly-identified hell ant species, …

The partial skeletal remains of an enantiornithine bird that lived 99 million years ago (Cretaceous period) have been found preserved in a piece of amber from northern Myanmar (Burma). Photograph of the amber specimen from the Angbamo site, Myanmar. Scale bar – 5 cm. Image credit: Xing et al, doi: …

A blood-engorged nymphal tick of the genus Amblyomma surrounded by fossilized mammalian erythrocytes (red blood cells) has been discovered in a piece of 15-45-million-year-old amber. The discovery is reported March 20 in the online edition of the Journal of Medical Entomology. This blood-engorged nymphal hard tick Amblyomma sp. (length – …

An international team of paleobiologists has uncovered the fossil of a 105-million-year-old gymnosperm pollinating beetle, named Darwinylus marcosi. The fossil, encased in a piece of amber from Spain, is shedding new light on the various ways insects pollinated plants during the mid-Mesozoic era. Reconstruction of Darwinylus marcosi on a gymnosperm …

In a paper published in the journal Cretaceous Research, Oregon State University researchers described a never-before-seen insect species found in a piece of 100-million-year-old amber excavated from a mine in Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Aethiocarenus burmanicus in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. The specimen originated from the Noije Bum 2001 Summit …