By Will Dunham
(Reuters) -Doctors ’specialists identified fossil residues of the oldest well -known ants -a winged insect with a scary jaw -like jaw that lived about 113 million years ago during the era of dinosaurs and was preserved in the limestone that was discovered in northeastern Brazil.
This type, which is called Vulcanidris Cratensis, is part of the ratios called Hell Ants – called their demonic jaw – which flourished in a wide geographical scope during the Cretaceous period but they have no alive grandchildren today. An ant of the Cretaceous era, which was previously discovered Haidomyrmex in honor of Hades, the ancient Greek deity of the lower world.
A medium -sized ant of about half an inch (1.35 cm), a very specialized jawsalrich that can enable it to install prey or mutilation. Like some ants alive today, it had wings and it seemed that it was a capable pilot. She also had sophisticated STINER as a wasp.
“It is possible that it will be confused with a wasp by an unacceptable eye,” said Enderson Lipo’s insectist of the Zoology Museum at the University of Sao Paulo, the author of the study, which was published this week in the current Biology Magazine.
“Maybe they used the PHATEPARTS to deal with their prey in a specific way.”
The lower jaw moved up and down and not side by side, as you do in the ants today.
“For the moment, many individual lower jaws in the ants can be found, but they usually cross horizontally,” said Libyo.
This ant is about 13 million years older than the oldest known ants, and samples in France and Myanmar that are preserved in amber, which is the fossilized tree juice.
Volcanmelder was well preserved in limestone, which was dug decades ago in CRATO in the Brazilian state of Brazil, perhaps in the 1980s or 1990s, according to Lepeco. It was held in a special group before donating it to the Sao Paulo Museum about five years ago.
“I was looking for wasps between the group’s fossils and was shocked when I realized this as one of the relatives close to the hell that was previously described from the burme amber,” said Lipoko, referring to the fossils from the meteorite.
The specialized nature of the anatomy of the Valkandis and the fact that two hell ants lived away from each other during this part of the Cretaceous era that the ants as a group appeared several million years before the presence of these newly defined species.
“According to molecular estimates, ants arose between 168 million and 120 million years. This new result supports an early age in these limits.”
It is believed that the ants have developed from a form of heburus. Their living relatives are the bears and bees.
Volkanidres lives a vibrant environmental system. Excavations from the region show that Volkondis lived alongside other insects, spiders, melanches, mediator, various volcanoes, turtles, crocodiles and reptiles called reptiles boats, birds and dinosaurs including Oberragara rural meat. Ant predators may have included frogs, birds, spiders and large insects.
Ants are almost everywhere on Earth, and the research published in 2022 was estimated that the total population of 20 kadilians worldwide. The dwarves of human population are about 8 billion.
“It is one of the most abundant groups in most environments on Earth,” Lebico said.
“They play many roles in which they occur, such as predation and herbing animals, controlling the population of other organisms. They also have fundamental relationships with specific plants and insects, and protect them from other animals.
(Participated in Will Doneham reports in Washington; Al -Tahrir by Daniel Walis)
