Some 312 million years, a mayfly landed on the edge of which muddy and then flew a puddle. Sludge from the tropical floodplain randomly perfect consistency a detailed impression of the Flash in the pan body-including details of its body segments and brands of its claws are retained made.
The next flood covered the impression with mud, keep it how it hardened into rock over subsequent millennia.
The fossil of mayfly is now the oldest known full-body impression of a flying insect, supplanted the previous record holder of 280-285 million years.
The fossil was discovered in the year 2008 as a Tufts University undergraduate Richard in a swamp in some Woods behind a Massachusetts strip servant Mall, lost fossils, port in accordance with a diploma thesis was believed looking for a rock formation in 1929.
As he left the swamp, he came to a rock outcrop of the type he was looking for. "I grabbed a loose piece on the outer edge of, and it was already of course how rocks tend to follow the weather,'" said servant working Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University.
"I opened it as a book and there were both halves (cast and mold) of the sample."
PLANET GREEN: Insects: up close and really, really personal
Insects are soft bodied animals and tend to break apart or curl in a strange way after death, such good quality fossils show that the bodies of insects are hard to get. Wings are the most commonly used parts paleontologists find. This makes particularly important this kind of impressions.
"The most fossil insects, if you it, you really have many surface details,", said Conrad Labandeira, curator of the Paleoentomology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who was not part of the study.
"This is a very valuable way of preservation," he continued. "You can see some of the movements of the body attachments actually." This gives you an idea of the scope of the movement of the legs… "This gives some information we normally get fossils from the body."
Notes on the fossil represents, the forerunner of the modern mayflies, and pushes back the date for the formation of this group of insects.
The pattern would then tropical environment with other flying and non-flying insects, amphibians, proto reptiles and old plants including some share is similar to the modern Horsetails, said Jacob Benner Tufts University to another team member along with Michael Engel of the University of Kansas.
The team, the results appear in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The oldest evidence of any kind for insects by insect body parts until in Devonian period, 418 million years ago, comes, Labandeira said.
The only older full-body impression as the mayfly said impression, servant an of a flightless insect, same group on the same site found by the after the discovery of Flash in the pan. The team has at least a thousand other fossils at the site found servant said, including fossil tracks from what seems to be a proto-reptiles.
"We have found a lot of interesting stuff," said Knecht. "This is only one of the characters come out."
没有评论:
发表评论