The Mesozoic was unquestionably the era of dinosaurs, but it should not be forgotten that during Triassic, sweat and Cretaceous also many other animal groups appeared and differentiated, spreading throughout the planet. One of these, which alone weighs more than all birds and mammals of the world, are the ants: they appeared at the end of the Giurassico, in the Cretaceous they have “exploded” and today they are represented by about 22,000 different specieswidespread everywhere except in Antarctica.
Well, we have just discovered (or rediscovered, as we will see) the oldest Formic fossil ever, at least for now: it is a specimen lived 113 million years agoin what is today Brazil, which has been described in a study published on Current Biology.
The ant from hell. The fossil was found in the north-east of Brazil, in the formation of clay known as Crato Konervat-Lagerstätte: the discovery took place a few years ago, but the specimen was immediately included in the collection of the Zoological Museum of the University of San Paolo and a little forgotten. The team that conducted the study decided to deepen what looked like an exceptional insect.
The fossil analysis revealed that it is a new specieswhich was baptized Vulcanidris Catensisin homage to the place where it was found. The ant was placed in the extinct sub -faming of the Haidomymecininmore simply known as “Hell Ants”, infernal ants, whose representatives have been found a bit all over the world, from France to Myanmar passing through Canada.
Shared record? The previous infernal ants that we discovered were however species lived around 100 million years ago; Vulcanidris Catensis “Improve” this 13 million years record, and the title of “oldest formica ever discovered” with another species found in the same training is played, Cariridris bipetilatawhich, however, explains the study, is represented only by incomplete fossils and which would require a new analysis to be re -evaluated.
Until then, therefore, the new Formica is also the oldest we know. The fact that belongs to a now extinct group It means, among other things, that he had physical characteristics other than those of all the other ants: instead of opening up and closing horizontally, the Its jaws moved on a vertical plane, and were used to trap the prey.
