Stories tagged amber

Aphid in amber: The new species is trapped inside fossilized tree sap.
Courtesy Rothamsted Research Visual Communications UnitA British man purchased an item on eBay that has proven to be a species not seen before. No, it’s not a new species of toast sporting the image of some religious or political icon, but rather a new species of fossil aphid encased in a 40 to 50 million year-old piece of amber.

The purchase took place last year from a seller in Lithuania, and was only made public this week. The lucky buyer was Dr Richard Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society. The small chunk of amber was a bargain, too - only £20 (about $36).

I guess this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. Just two years ago, a previously unknown species of sea urchin was acquired on eBay.

In this recent case, Dr. Harrington sent the fossil to Professor Ole Heie, a fossil aphid expert in Denmark, and was delighted to learn his new acquisition was an unknown extinct species.

Harrington wanted to name the new species Mindarus ebayi in honor of the online auction site. Unfortunately, it seems the scientific community has no sense of humor in regards to frivolous nomenclature, unless it involves a favorite rock musician. So instead, the newly described aphid was named Mindarus harringtoni in Harrington’s honor. Gee, I hope he isn’t too bummed out about that. Go here to see a photo of the buyer with his prized fossil bug.

SOURCES
Rothamsted Research story
Story on NowPublic site
Story on BBC site

Tags : paleontology, insects, fossil resin, fossil, entomology, eBay, amber

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An alternate theory holds that dinosaurs died of embarrassment: A Fredrogersaurus, obviously wishing he were dead, extinct, or just anywhere but here.
Courtesy Elston

Biting insects spread all kinds of diseases. (You can learn all about this in the Science Museum’s newest exhibit, Disease Detectives.) Now a scientists thinks they may have also helped kill off the dinosaurs. George Poinar, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, notes that many insects from dinosaur times have been preserved in amber. Many of them carry microbes that can cause malaria, dysentery and other illnesses. He speculates that these illnesses could have been the major cause of the dinosaurs’ long, slow demise. The asteroid impact / volcanic activity / climate change simply finished them off.

Poinar and his wife Roberta have published a book, What Bugged The Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease And Death In The Cretaceous. In it they also note that, late in the dinosaur era, flowering plants spread rapidly, helped along by newly-evolved insect pollinators. This sudden change in available food may have also played a hand in the dinos’ extinction.

Tags : disease, dinosaurs, insects, parasites, fossils, amber, health, infectious disease, vectors, disease transmission, Mr. Rogers

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Classic Spider Web: Spiders have been surfing the web since the age of dinosaurs. Photo courtesy Mark RyanDid you know the classic structured web that spiders use to capture their prey has been around since the days of the dinosaurs?

A new fossil discovered in Spain contains the oldest known remains of an orb web – the classic structure created by spiders and made up of concentric circles joined by radiating spokes. The web was found in a piece of amber–fossilized tree sap–dating back to the early Cretaceous period, about 110 million years ago.

The oldest known spiders were scurrying about the planet around 400 million years. And fossils of spiders are common, but fossils of their extruded silk products are very rare. The recent find, locked inside the small piece of amber, contains twenty-six web strands along with remnants of typical spider prey such as a fly, a mite and a beetle.

“The advanced structure of this fossilized web, along with the type of prey that the web caught, indicates that spiders have been fishing insects from the air for a very long time,” said David Grimaldi, curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History.

Two groups of spiders, Araneoidea and Deinopoidea, produce orb webs. Both types have similar proteins in their silk, but the former entraps prey with droplets of glue on the web strands, while the latter uses a dry Velcro-like substance for the same purpose. Scientists now think the two types arose from a common ancestor and then modified their individual trapping techniques.

What this all means is that spiders and their prey-snaring methods could have driven the evolution of insects and their defenses against such methods. Moths and butterflies are members of the family Lepidoptera, and are covered in scales that allow them to roll out of gooey web traps.

“And it happens that Lepidoptera evolved around the same time that spiders produced these webs,” Grimaldi said.

Story links:
American Museum of Natural History story
New Scientist article
New York Times article

Tags : insects, spiders, spider webs, orb webs, fossils, amber

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