Oldest-known Ant Fossil Found in Brazil Preserved in Limestone
A 113-million-year-old fossilized ant preserved in limestone unearthed in northeastern Brazil is seen in this photo released on April 24.
Scientists have identified the fossilized remains of the oldest-known ant — a winged insect with fearsome scythe-like jaws that lived about 113 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs and was preserved in limestone unearthed in northeastern Brazil.
The species, called Vulcanidris cratensis, is part of a lineage called hell ants — named for their demonic-looking jaws — that prospered in a wide geographical range during the Cretaceous Period but have no descendants alive today. A previously discovered Cretaceous hell ant was named Haidomyrmex in honor of Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld.
A medium-sized ant about 1.35 centimeters long, Vulcanidris possessed highly specialized jaws that would have enabled it to pin down or impale prey. Like some ants alive today, it had wings and appears to have been a capable flier. It also had a well-developed stinger like a wasp.
'It would probably be confused with a wasp by an untrained eye,' said entomologist Anderson Lepeco of the Museum of Zoology of the University of Sao Paulo, lead author of the study published last month in the journal Current Biology.
'They probably used their mandibles (mouthparts) to handle their prey in a specific way,' Lepeco said.
Its mandibles moved up and down and not side to side, as they do in today's ants.
'Currently, many odd mandible shapes can be found in ants, but they usually articulate horizontally,' Lepeco said.
This ant is roughly 13 million years older than the previous oldest-known ants, specimens found in France and Myanmar that were preserved in amber, which is fossilized tree sap.
The Vulcanidris anatomy is remarkably well preserved in the limestone, which was excavated decades ago in the Crato geological formation in the Brazilian state of Ceara, probably in the 1980s or 1990s, according to Lepeco. It was held in a private collection before being donated to the Sao Paulo museum about five years ago.
'I was looking for wasps among the fossils of the collection and was shocked when I recognized this one as a close relative of a hell ant previously described from Burmese amber,' Lepeco said, referring to the fossil from Myanmar.
The specialized nature of the Vulcanidris anatomy and the fact that two hell ants lived so far from each other during this part of the Cretaceous suggest that ants as a group emerged many millions of years before this newly identified species existed.
'According to molecular estimates, ants originated between 168 million and 120 million years ago. This new finding supports an earlier age within these limits,' Lepeco said.
Ants are believed to have evolved from a form of wasp. Their closest living relatives are wasps and bees.
Vulcanidris inhabited an ecosystem teeming with life. Fossils from the region show that Vulcanidris lived alongside other insects, spiders, millipedes, centipedes, various crustaceans, turtles, crocodilians, flying reptiles called pterosaurs, birds and dinosaurs including the feathered meat-eater Ubirajara. The ant's predators may have included frogs, birds, spiders and larger insects.
Ants have colonized almost everywhere on Earth, and research published in 2022 estimated that their total population is 20 quadrillion globally. That dwarfs the human population of about 8 billion.
'They are one of the most abundant groups in most environments on Earth,' Lepeco said.
'They play many roles where they occur, such as predation and herbivory, controlling populations of other organisms. They also have intrinsic relationships with specific plants and insects, protecting them from other animals. Subterranean and litter ants help in soil health, and they may also act as decomposers, feeding on dead organisms,' Lepeco said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Nikkei Asia
3 days ago
- Nikkei Asia
Russia's shrinking navy reveals its growing strategic dependence on China
A ceremony on July 31 following the arrival of Chinese naval vessels in Vladivostok, Russia, ahead of Chinese-Russian joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan. © Reuters Hao Nan is a research fellow with the Charhar Institute and a nuclear futures fellow (2025-2026) with the Ploughshares Fund & Horizon 2045.
Yomiuri Shimbun
4 days ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Peru's Coastal Guano Birds Face Crisis as Population Drops over 75%, Scientists Say
LIMA (Reuters) — Scientists along Peru's central Pacific coast are sounding the alarm that more action is needed to protect seabirds, sea lions, and penguins as climate change, disease and overfishing threaten their survival. Research shows the number of guano birds has dropped by more than three-quarters in the past three years to around 500,000, according to local biologists, down from a population of 4 million in 2022. These black-and-white coastal birds form an important part of Peruvian wildlife, producing large quantities of excrement used as a natural fertilizer. 'We are very alarmed by this sharp decline,' said Susana Cardenas, director of the Environmental Sustainability Center at Peru's Cayetano Heredia University in an interview with Reuters. She monitors marine life at the Punta San Juan reserve roughly 530 kilometers south of Lima. Breeding centers like the one Cardenas runs are helping to protect bird populations that she described as 'golden egg-laying hens' because they were so fragile, yet valuable. Peru's state agency AgroRural counted 587,000 guano seabirds in June, spread across 22 islands and eight coastal points, that include cormorants, boobies and pelicans. That figure is down from an average of 4 million registered in recent decades by Peru's Agriculture Ministry. Scientists said that the sharp decline began with an outbreak of avian flu in 2022 that killed tens of thousands of birds, penguins and sea lions. The El Nino weather phenomenon disrupted marine ecosystems the following year, and forced birds to migrate. Then in 2024, overfishing of anchoveta — a primary food source from the anchovy fish family — further depleted populations. At Punta San Juan, only 200,000 guano birds, 2,500 Humboldt penguins and 11,000 sea lions remain, the research center found. The decline in bird numbers is hurting the guano fertilizer harvest, important for the local farming industry. This nutrient-rich fertilizer is collected every five years under government supervision and exported in controlled quantities. The last collection was in 2024, but with fewer birds, the 'sustainability of this activity will be at risk,' Cardenas added. Peru's Agriculture Ministry said in a response to a Reuters request for comment on the decline that it was developing a national plan for the repopulation of guano birds with various different conservation entities. In April, authorities allowed the biggest catch quota in seven years of anchoveta, used in fishmeal, citing larger populations. But biologists said that the anchoveta populations were still not large enough to sustain both fishing and the bird populations that depend on them. Sea lions and penguins that live in colonies along the Pacific coasts of Peru and Chile were also at risk from dwindling food supplies caused by changing weather patterns and overfishing. Humboldt penguins could be extinct in 100 years, Cardenas said, if protections failed to increase. 'Their population is trending downward, especially in protected areas where growth is most needed.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
4 days ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
New Stick Insect Species Is Australia's Heaviest
SYDNEY (Reuters) — In a remote rainforest in Australia, home to deadly snakes, spiders and creepy-crawlies, scientists have discovered a new species of stick insect they believe is the heaviest ever found in the country. The new species weighs 44 grams, about the same as a golf ball, and is 40 centimeters long. James Cook University's Angus Emmott, who helped identify the new Acrophylla alta species, said the creature's large size could be an evolutionary response to its cool, wet habitat. 'Their body mass likely helps them survive the colder conditions, and that's why they've developed into this large insect over millions of years,' he was quoted as saying in a media release. 'From what we know to date, this is Australia's heaviest insect.' The new stick insect was discovered in the canopies of the mountainous Wet Tropics region of Far North Queensland, in Australia's northeast. The remote habitat was probably also why it had remained undiscovered for so long, Emmott said. 'It's restricted to a small area of high-altitude rainforest, and it lives high in the canopy. So, unless you get a cyclone or a bird bringing one down, very few people get to see them,' he said. The stick insect's distinctive eggs also helped scientists identify it as a new species. 'Every species of stick insect has their own distinct egg style,' Emmott said. 'They've all got different surfaces and different textures and pitting, and they can be different shapes. Even the caps on them are all very unique.' Two specimens have been added to the Queensland Museum's collection to aid future research.
