Researchers have unearthed 112million-year-old insects perfectly preserved in fossilised tree resin, marking the first time such prehistoric specimens have been found in South America.
The discovery at the Genoveva quarry in the Oriente basin, Ecuador, represents a major palaeontological milestone, as virtually all amber deposits containing ancient life forms from the past 130 million years have been located in the Northern Hemisphere.
Xavier Delclòs from the University of Barcelona, who led the research team to the site in 2022, confirmed that more than a third of the 60 amber chunks collected contained bio-inclusions.
"This is the first time that [Mesozoic] amber with bio-inclusions of insects and spiders has been found in all of South America and they are certainly new species," Delclòs stated.
The amber specimens, dating to the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, contain an extraordinary array of preserved creatures including mosquitoes, beetles, various fly species, wasps, biting midges, ants and even a spider's web.
The fossilised resin originated from conifers in the Araucaria family that dominated the landscape when Ecuador formed part of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent.
Scientists distinguish between two amber types at the site: resin from tree roots, which contained no specimens, and above-ground resin that trapped passing creatures.
Study co-author Carlos Jaramillo from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute had pursued rumours of the deposits for approximately ten years before locating the site using geological field notes.
A fly of the family Chironomidae, non-biting midges
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"I went there and realised this place is amazing," Jaramillo remarked, noting the abundance of visible amber in the open quarry.
Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, a paleo entomologist at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, emphasised the discovery's importance.
He describing the amber fragments as "little windows into the past" that will enhance understanding of how flowering plants and insects interacted during the dinosaur era.
David Grimaldi, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, noted that the absence of amber deposits in regions that once formed Gondwana has long been "an enigma" for scientists.
Researcher Monica Solorzano-Kraemer looks for amber at the Genoveva quarry in Ecuador
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The find addresses this geographical gap in the fossil record.
The research, published in Communications Earth and Environment, reveals crucial evidence about a transformative period when flowering plants were beginning to diversify across the globe.
"It's the time when the relationship between flowering plants and insects got started," Mr Pérez-de la Fuente explained, "and that turned out to be one of the most successful partnerships in nature."
The ancient ecosystem differed dramatically from today's Amazon rainforest, according to Fabiany Herrera, curator of fossil plants at Chicago's Field Museum.
A fly of the family Chironomidae, non-biting midges
|REUTERS
Analysis of the amber's contents revealed a landscape dominated by ferns and conifers, including the distinctive Monkey Puzzle Tree, species that have long vanished from modern Amazonia.
"It was a different kind of forest," Herrera noted, describing a humid environment with abundant water sources where lakes, rivers and swamps supported insects requiring aquatic habitats for their life cycles.
Professor Delclòs suggested that visitors to the Cretaceous forest would have needed insect repellent, adding: "And probably also some way of escaping from a carnivorous dinosaur or two."
Despite blood-feeding mosquitoes being preserved, any dinosaur DNA would have degraded millennia ago.
"We cannot have a Jurassic Park from Cretaceous amber, at least with current techniques," Delclòs confirmed.