Ancient creature with porcupine-like quills found in amber. It's a new species
Another material, however, allows researchers in the modern day to see a specific moment in time, from an insect stuck in flight to a creature's last breath still captured in a bubble.
That material is amber and it's created when gloopy, sticky tree resin hardens over millennia.
In Myanmar, amber has been discovered throughout the Kachin State — including one piece with a new species hidden inside.
The amber was discovered and sold into trade in 2014, before political conflict surrounded the amber mines, and later moved to a lab at Capital Normal University in Beijing, according to a study published Aug. 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Fossil Record.
The piece was trimmed and polished, providing a window to the animal caught inside, according to the study.
The new species is a mite and it represents the first species in a new genus, researchers said.
The amber dates to the Cretaceous period about 98 million years ago, according to the study.
The mite looks like something you might find today, except for one key feature.
The critter has 'ultra-long' dorsal setae, or hair-like structures that cover the back of the body, according to the study.
'The dorsal setae of Cretachyzeria macroseta (a new genus and species) are extremely long and dense, resembling the quills of a porcupine,' researchers said. 'This unusual morphological structure likely served specific biological functions.'
In modern mites, small hair-like features on the body are used to provide shelter to their larvae, making it easier for them to transport and disperse the larvae, according to the study.
The prehistoric mite may have used them for the same purpose, or at least for protection as the specimen trapped in amber is covered with small grains of sand or earth.
'This suggests that the ultra-long setae may provide some protection from impurities, safeguarding the fragile abdomen. This feature would enhance the survival of the mite inhabiting tree or soil environments,' researchers said.
The scientists also hypothesized that the mite might have been red in color, which would have made it less likely to be eaten by predatory insects or spiders, according to the study. The long setae could have also made it hard for predators to grab on to the small critter.
'The discovery of a new species in Cretaceous Myanmar amber suggests that this feature was already present 99 million years ago,' researchers said, also suggesting this mite group 'evolved at a slow rate and that its ancestral traits have remained relatively unchanged from those (living) species.'
Kachin State is in northern Myanmar, along the border with China.
The research team includes Yu Liu, Qing-Hai Fan and Dong Ren.
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Miami Herald
07-08-2025
- Miami Herald
Ancient creature with porcupine-like quills found in amber. It's a new species
Fossils offer the opportunity to look at an era of time permanently frozen in stone. Dinosaurs swallowed by mud or plants pressed into the ground over millions of years create imprints of a world long extinct. Another material, however, allows researchers in the modern day to see a specific moment in time, from an insect stuck in flight to a creature's last breath still captured in a bubble. That material is amber and it's created when gloopy, sticky tree resin hardens over millennia. In Myanmar, amber has been discovered throughout the Kachin State — including one piece with a new species hidden inside. The amber was discovered and sold into trade in 2014, before political conflict surrounded the amber mines, and later moved to a lab at Capital Normal University in Beijing, according to a study published Aug. 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Fossil Record. The piece was trimmed and polished, providing a window to the animal caught inside, according to the study. The new species is a mite and it represents the first species in a new genus, researchers said. The amber dates to the Cretaceous period about 98 million years ago, according to the study. The mite looks like something you might find today, except for one key feature. The critter has 'ultra-long' dorsal setae, or hair-like structures that cover the back of the body, according to the study. 'The dorsal setae of Cretachyzeria macroseta (a new genus and species) are extremely long and dense, resembling the quills of a porcupine,' researchers said. 'This unusual morphological structure likely served specific biological functions.' In modern mites, small hair-like features on the body are used to provide shelter to their larvae, making it easier for them to transport and disperse the larvae, according to the study. The prehistoric mite may have used them for the same purpose, or at least for protection as the specimen trapped in amber is covered with small grains of sand or earth. 'This suggests that the ultra-long setae may provide some protection from impurities, safeguarding the fragile abdomen. This feature would enhance the survival of the mite inhabiting tree or soil environments,' researchers said. The scientists also hypothesized that the mite might have been red in color, which would have made it less likely to be eaten by predatory insects or spiders, according to the study. The long setae could have also made it hard for predators to grab on to the small critter. 'The discovery of a new species in Cretaceous Myanmar amber suggests that this feature was already present 99 million years ago,' researchers said, also suggesting this mite group 'evolved at a slow rate and that its ancestral traits have remained relatively unchanged from those (living) species.' Kachin State is in northern Myanmar, along the border with China. The research team includes Yu Liu, Qing-Hai Fan and Dong Ren.
Yahoo
31-07-2025
- Yahoo
Bone-Eating Worms Have Lurked in The Ocean For 100 Million Years
Not content with a diet of old leaves, some worm species actually eat bones. A new study has now traced the ancient ancestors of these bone-burrowers back through 100 million years of evolution. Deep in the ocean, bone-eating worms from the genus Osedax feast on the carcasses of whales, sucking up fats and proteins from the skeletons. And it looks like they've been doing so for a while now. By scanning fossils to look for traces of bone-eating behavior, researchers from University College London (UCL) and the Natural History Museum in the UK have been able to identify seven new types of worm from the Cretaceous period. There would've been no whale on the menu at that time, but traces left behind by these worms were found in fossils of mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs: the dominant marine reptiles of the time, now on show in museum exhibits. Related: "We haven't found anything else that makes a similar burrow to these animals," says paleontologist Sarah Jamison-Todd, from UCL. "As the ancient bores are so similar to modern Osedax species, and we don't have body fossils to contradict us, we assume that they were made by the same or a similar organism." "It shows that the bone-eating worms are part of a lineage that stretches back at least to the Cretaceous, and perhaps further. We can see how the diversity of bone-eating worms changes across millions of years." The team was able to build 3D models of 130 fossils without damaging them, through the use of computed tomography (CT) scans. Six fossils showed signs of burrows. That then led to the identification of seven new ichnospecies – species categorized based on traces in fossils, rather than direct remains of the creatures. Some of the boring patterns matched modern-day species, suggesting a surprising level of evolutionary stability across many millions of years. The researchers also used microscopic fragments around the fossils to date the bones and the worms that chewed through them. That placed them at at least 100 million years ago, meaning these creatures evolved much earlier than previously thought. "By using the remains of small organisms that make up the chalk itself, we were able to date the fossils to more precise time slices of the Cretaceous period," says Marc Jones, paleontologist at the Natural History Museum. There are plenty of other discoveries like this still waiting to be made, the researchers suggest – which could happen through further scans of ancient fossils as well as studies of the modern species living in the oceans today. Additional work looking at the genetics of the organisms living today could tell us more about the evolutionary history of these tiny creatures, though researchers will have to collect more samples and more data first. "There are many more examples of boring that haven't yet been named from both ancient and modern bone-eating worms," says Jamison-Todd. "In fact, some bores from the Cretaceous appear to be similar to ones that are still made today." "Finding out whether these burrows are made by the same species, or are an example of convergent evolution, will give us a much better idea of how these animals have evolved, and how they have shaped marine ecosystems over millions of years." The research has been published in PLOS ONE. Related News Ancient Voice Box Finally Reveals How Dinosaurs May Have Sounded Stunning Grand Canyon Fossils Reveal Evolution's Weird Experiments Neither Scales Nor Feathers: Bizarre Appendage Discovered on Reptile Fossil Solve the daily Crossword
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16-07-2025
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Scientists Drilled for Geothermal Energy. They Hit a 67-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Instead.
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: The Denver Museum of Nature & Science discovered a dinosaur fossil buried in its own parking lot. The partial bone of a plant-eating dinosaur is the oldest and deepest dinosaur fossil ever found in Denver. The museum is a well-known dinosaur buff destination, and has multiple full-size dinosaur skeletons on display. When a museum popular with dinosaur enthusiasts went digging in its own parking lot, the dinosaur fossil their team found didn't have far to travel to make it into an exhibit. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science located a roughly 67.5-million-year-old partial dinosaur bone 763 feet below its own parking lot—the oldest and deepest ever found in Denver. 'This partial vertebra from a plant-eating dinosaur offers an extraordinary glimpse into prehistoric Denver and the animals that inhabited this area,' the museum wrote in a statement. Museum staff weren't looking for dinosaur bones to add to an exhibit when they started digging. Instead, crews were conducting geothermal test drilling to assess the viability of switching from natural gas to geothermal energy. While the equipment was out, they added some scientific coring to their process in the hopes of 'better understand[ing] the geology of the Denver Basin.' That led to the unexpected fossil. The coring hole, just two inches wide, was only supposed to help experts study the soil. There was no expectation of locating something as wild as a dinosaur fossil. 'Finding a dinosaur bone in a core is like hitting a hole in one from the Moon,' James Hagadorn, the museum's curator of geology, told the Associated Press. 'It's like winning the Willy Wonka factory. It's incredible, it's super rare.' The museum said that only two other similar coring samples in the entire world have produced fossils. Neither of those, however, were at the site of a dinosaur museum. The discovery has been dated to the late Cretaceous period, roughly 1.5 million years before the extinction of dinosaurs, and the bone was found alongside fossilized vegetation. 'This animal was living in what was probably a swampy environment that would have been heavily vegetated at the time,' Patrick O'Connor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum, told the AP. The dinosaur experts believe—as Erin LaCount, director of education programs at the Dinosaur Ridge track site near Denver, told the AP—that the fossil was from a small dinosaur, possibly a duck-billed dinosaur, a thescelosaurus, or another similar-sized dinosaur. Still, there's not enough evidence to distinguish with certainty what type of dinosaur was located. Not everyone was as excited about the find as the folks in Denver. When the AP contacted Thomas Williamson, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque, he agreed it was an unexpected discovery, but said it was one without much value because there's no real way to determine what species of dinosaur was found. 'It's a surprise, I guess,' he said. 'Scientifically, it's not that exciting.' Folks in Denver, though, may oppose that view. With the fossil now on display in the museum's Discovering Teen Rex exhibit, Hagadorn said he'd love to excavate the entire parking lot to find the rest of the dinosaur. 'But I don't think that's going to fly,' he said, 'because we really need parking.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life? Solve the daily Crossword
