The idea that prehistoric animals can be perfectly captured in amber, preserved for millions of years, is not just a pile of dino-cloning sci-fi franchises like “Jurassic Park.” On Thursday, scientists unveiled a monumental discovery about the ancient world included in the discovery of a “helmet ant” caught in amber, as it was in the process of devouring a baby cockroach.
A helmier, as haidomyrmecine, is a relative of modern ants, but with a critical difference: Instead of horizontal pincers biting their prey, the helmet tower had vertical jaws resembling a lizard, which would pin its intended meal against a horn on has the head. The helmet in question here managed to catch on Caputoraptor elegans, an insect related to modern cockroaches, but which, like the helmet itself, is now extinct.
“Helmets are one of the first branches of the antibody of life and their trunk originated prior to the most common ancestor of all living species,” said Phillip Barden, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at New Jersey. Institute of Technology’s Department of Biological Sciences, told Salon by email. “This is no different than the relationships between extinct non-avian dinosaurs and the birds we have today.”
As the article in contemporary biology makes clear, scientists are not sure why the unique vertical type of jaw seen in helmets no longer exists today.
“The ecological pressures and developmental requirements leading to vertical mandible articulation are not yet known,” the authors write. “Also unclear are the conditions that drove haidomyrmecines to extinction after being held for a period of at least 20 million years in present-day Asia, Europe and North America.” They note that half ants are “susceptible to extinction during periods of ecological change”, although competition with other ants could also have played a role in their extinction.
Salon asked Barden to explain the greater significance of the study.
“This paper provides an explanation of why it is that we see diversity in the fossil record that has not been around for a long time today,” Barden Salon said in an email. “At the same time, it also gives us a better picture of an extinct group of insects, which we can hopefully use to better understand how and why extinction lines affect it differently.”
Barden also pointed out that “although there are thousands of predator ants, no living ants catch prey in this way. That means no modern ants have horns of any kind other than mandibles that specialize in this particular way.” He also talked about what the ancient cockroach ancestor – who was a child at the time it was polluted – must have experienced being bitten by the helmet nut.
“The prey would essentially have been around the neck by the elongated horn and mandibles of the helmet ant before it probably got an immobilizing stench,” Barden Salon said. “We think helmets can have very rapid muscle movements, something we see in some modern ant-predators, so the hell ant-mandibles might be locked in a very fast flash.”
