This fossil of an ancient fly ant fairy was recently discovered along the bank of the Flathead River in Montana . It ’s the first of its form ever discovered , and it ’s wedge scientist to rethink when these wight first seem on Earth .
Called Crematogaster aurora , it ’s a mintage of ant that lived in Montana 46 million years ago during the Eocene . As Smithsonian Sciencereports , paleontologist Dale Greenwalt of the Smithsonian ’s National Museum of Natural History find the emmet buried in the Kishenehn Formation shale .
scientist had thought that this ant genus , Crematogaster , evolved jolly of late , but as Greenwalt tell the Smithsonian , the discovery “ is requiring scientist to completely rethink when this genus and its related forms appear , ” adding that “ it is obvious it has been around much longer than previously calculated . ” The new ant , along with 12 other newly identify ant mintage , were of late described ina new paperpublished in the journal Sociobiology .
( Credit : John S Lapolla , Dale E Greenwalt / Smithsonian )
In all , some 249 fossilized emmet were examined in the study , with 152 of them assigned to various ant subfamilies .
“ The Eocene is of particular interest for understanding ant development because it is during this geological period that many present - day species and ecologically prevailing clades of ants apparently emerged , ” write the writer in the study .
The fogy are helping paleontologists understand the evolution of ants and how they achieve their New terrestrial dominance . As the research worker observe , it ’s “ vital to sympathise the pacing of ant diversity during the Eocene . ” Their early achiever was ride by such things as bloom plants and mellow temperatures ( it was about 60 degrees F ( 15 level C ) strong worldwide back then than it is today ) .
“ A tidy sum of the great unwashed also think the meteorite that caused the disappearance of the dinosaur and terminate the Cretaceous form of reset the board for a lot of new affair to evolve and diversify , ” Greenwalt tell apart the Smithsonian . “ This maybe what happened with the ants . ”
[ Smithsonian Science ]
BiologyEvolutionPaleontologyScience
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