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AP Photo/A.
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WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Scientists have found three well preserved ancient insects frozen in
amber - and time - in what is Earth's oldest bug trap.
The
discoveries of amber-encased insects in Italy may sound like something out of
"Jurassic Park" but these bugs are even older than that. They are
about 230 million years old, which puts them in the Triassic time period, and
about 100 million years older than what had been the previously known oldest
critters trapped in fossilized tree resin, or amber.
Gooey tree resin
is like sap but without water and can't be diluted.
Researchers
painstakingly examined 70,000 droplets of amber found in northeastern Italy.
Stuck in them were two microscopic mites and much of one fly. The mites are too
small to be seen with the naked eye and the fly is a tad tinier than a fruit
fly, researchers say.
The
discovery was reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
While older
insects have been found in rock fossils, these are different because they are
not compressed and better preserved, said study lead author David Grimaldi,
curator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And you can see
more detail, he said.
""That's
the great thing about amber. You can make this incredible detailed comparison
with living species." Grimaldi said.
And when
Grimaldi compared the ancient mites to their modern day descendants, he was
surprised about how similar they are. Except for difference in the mouth and
fewer legs, "they're dead ringers for (modern) gall mites," he said.
The modern ones can be found in bubbles or galls on plant leaves.
And that's
surprising because the world itself has changed a lot from when these bugs were
alive. Back then, there was only one giant continent, some early primitive
dinosaurs and no flower plants. Mites now live on flowering plants, but their
ancient relatives must have stayed on trees, Grimaldi said.
Derek
Briggs, director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and who wasn't
part of the research, called the bugs' discovery tantalizing, adding that it
could help researchers further understand how life evolved on land.
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