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Washington (AP) – Scientists have discovered preserved prehistoric insects in Amber for the first time in South America, offering a new glimpse in life on earth at one time when flowering plants were now diversified and spreading around the world.
Several samples found in a sandstone mine in Ecuador 112 million years ago, curator of fossil plants at the Field Museum in Chicago and the co-author of the study published on Thursday in the Journal Communications Earth and Environment.
Almost all known amber deposits have been in the Northern Hemisphere for the last 130 million years, and this is a long “a puzzle” that scientists have found something in the southern regions, which once included supercontinent Gondwana, said David Grimaldi said, who was not an entomologist in the American Museum of Natural History, who was not involved.
This is the first time researchers have identified ancient beetles, flies, ants and wasp in the resin of fossil tree in South America, said Ricardo Perez-De La Facent, a Peliyntomologist of Natural History Oxford University Museum, which was not even involved in the new study.
“Amber pieces are small windows in the past,” Perez-Day La Futen said, saying that search would help researchers understand the conversation developed between flowering plants and insects that lived during the era of dinosaurs.
Researchers highlighted hundreds of pieces of amber, with some ancient insects, pollen and tree leaves, in a sandstone in the ecuador which is on the edge of the Amazon basin today.
But today’s rainforest is very different from walking through dinosaurs, Heera said. Based on the analysis of fossils in Amber, the ancient rainforest included species of fern and conifers including unusual monkey puzzle trees, which no longer grow in Amazonia.
“It was a different kind of forest,” said Herera.
Amber Deposit was earlier known for geologists and miners who worked in Jenoweva Quarry. Study the co-author Carlos Jarmilo at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, first heard about them almost a decade ago and determined to find the accurate location aided by the geology field notes.
“I went there and realized that this place is amazing,” said Jaramilo. “The mines have too much amber,” and it appears more in the open mine as it will be hidden under the dense layers of the vegetation.
Researchers will continue to analyze amber trove to learn more about the biodiversity of the Creteseas-era-including insects contributing to the growth by eating on flowering plants. “Amber preserves things that are small,” Grimaldi said.
“This is the time when the relationship between flowering plants and insects began,” said Perez-Day La Fuint. “And it is one of the most successful partnership in nature.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Department of Science Education and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Howard Hughes Medical Institute. AP is completely responsible for all materials.
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