r/science • u/marketrent • Nov 27 '22
RETRACTED - Biology The oldest known fossil of an army ant, preserved in Baltic amber about 35 million years ago, provides first evidence that now-extinct lineages swarmed Europe in the Eocene epoch
https://news.njit.edu/oldest-army-ant-ever-discovered-reveals-iconic-predator-once-raided-europe6
u/marketrent Nov 27 '22
Jesse Jenkins, November 22, 2022.
Excerpt:
Their nomadic lifestyle and ravenous raiding have taken army ants (Dorylinae) to most continents on Earth, but a rare fossil discovery is now offering first evidence that the infamous predators once swarmed a land they are strikingly absent from today — Europe.
In the journal Biology Letters, researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Colorado State University have reported the discovery of the oldest army ant on record, preserved in Baltic amber dating to the Eocene (~35 million years ago).
The eyeless specimen Dissimulodorylus perseus (D. perseus) — named after the mythical Greek hero Perseus who famously defeated Medusa with the limited use of sight — marks just the second fossil army ant species ever described, and the first army ant fossil recovered from the Eastern Hemisphere.
Sized at roughly 3 millimeters in length, researchers say the ant fossil brings to light previously unknown army ant lineages that would have existed across Continental Europe before undergoing extinction in the past 50 million years.
Remarkably, the fossil had been kept in obscurity for nearly 100 years in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, before being identified by the paper’s lead author and NJIT Ph.D. candidate, Christine Sosiak.
“Army ant workers participate in raiding swarms, hunting other insects and even vertebrates. Because these army ants are blind, they use chemical communication to stay coordinated with one another to take down large prey,” explained Sosiak. “This worker may have strayed too far from its fellow hunters and into sticky tree resin, which eventually solidified and encased the ant as we see it today.”
Biology Letters, DOI 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0398
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u/froit Nov 27 '22
In a fossil the original contents have been replaced or petrified. In amber, is that not just the original animal?
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u/Guilty-Minute8711 Nov 27 '22
So we now have murder hornets aaand dino-ants...yo Elon, when is mars gonna be right coz I think we're about done here
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u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics Apr 06 '23
In response to concerns about the age of specimens reported in the study, the editors of Biology Letters have retracted this article at the request of the authors.
The flair on this submission has been updated to indicate that the article was retracted. For more information about how the subreddit handles retractions, please see our rules and the wiki of retracted submissions.