New Insects, Bacteria Uncovered in Dinosaur-Era Amber Deposit
ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2010) — A description of a 95-million-year-old amber deposit -- the first major discovery of its kind from the African continent -- is adding new fungus, insects, spiders, nematodes, and even bacteria to an ecosystem that had been shared by dinosaurs. In addition, the amber deposit may provide fresh insights into the rise and diversification of flowering plants during the Cretaceous. The new paper, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reconstructs an ancient tropical forest uncovered in present-day Ethiopia and is the work of an international team of 20 scientists.
Rare Ethiopian amber deposit offers fresh insights into Cretaceous-period ecosystem. (Credit: Courtesy PNAS/ Matthias Svojtka)
"Until now, we had discovered virtually no Cretaceous amber sites from the southern hemisphere's Gondwanan supercontinent," says author Paul Nascimbene of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. "Significant Cretaceous amber deposits had been found primarily in North America and Eurasia."
"The first angiosperms, or flowering plants, appeared and diversified in the Cretaceous," says first author Alexander Schmidt of the University of Göttingen in Germany. "Their rise to dominance drastically changed terrestrial ecosystems, and the Ethiopian amber deposit sheds light on this time of change."
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Cretaceous African life captured in amber
Alexander R. Schmidt a,1, Vincent Perrichot b,c,1, Matthias Svojtka d, Ken B. Anderson e, Kebede H. Belete f, Robert Bussert g, Heinrich Dörfelt h, Saskia Jancke i, Barbara Mohr i, Eva Mohrmann i, Paul C. Nascimbene j, André Nel k, Patricia Nel k, Eugenio Ragazzi l, Guido Roghi m, Erin E. Saupe c, Kerstin Schmidt n, Harald Schneider o, Paul A. Selden c,p, and Norbert Vávra d
-Author Affiliations
aCourant Research Centre Geobiology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 37077 Göttingen, Germany;
bCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 6118 Géosciences & Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Rennes, Université Rennes 1, 35042 Rennes, France;
cPaleontological Institute, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045;
dDepartment of Paleontology, Geozentrum, Universität Wien, 1090 Vienna, Austria;
eDepartment of Geology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901-4502;
f Golden Prospect Mining Company Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia;
gInstitut für Angewandte Geowissenschaften, Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany;
hMikrobielle Phytopathologie and
nInstitut für Ökologie, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany;
i Museum für Naturkunde zu Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany;
jDivision of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024;
kCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7205, Entomologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 75005 Paris, France;
lDepartment of Pharmacology and Anaesthesiology, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy;
mInstitute of Geosciences and Earth Resources, National Research Council and Department of Geoscience, University of Padua, 35137 Padua, Italy; and
oDepartment of Botany and
pPalaeontology Department, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom
Edited* by David L. Dilcher, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, and approved March 3, 2010 (received for review January 23, 2010)
Abstract
Amber is of great paleontological importance because it preserves a diverse array of organisms and associated remains from different habitats in and close to the amber-producing forests. Therefore, the discovery of amber inclusions is important not only for tracing the evolutionary history of lineages with otherwise poor fossil records, but also for elucidating the composition, diversity, and ecology of terrestrial paleoecosystems. Here, we report a unique find of African amber with inclusions, from the Cretaceous of Ethiopia. Ancient arthropods belonging to the ants, wasps, thrips, zorapterans, and spiders are the earliest African records of these ecologically important groups and constitute significant discoveries providing insight into the temporal and geographical origins of these lineages. Together with diverse microscopic inclusions, these findings reveal the interactions of plants, fungi and arthropods during an epoch of major change in terrestrial ecosystems, which was caused by the initial radiation of the angiosperms. Because of its age, paleogeographic location and the exceptional preservation of the inclusions, this fossil resin broadens our understanding of the ecology of Cretaceous woodlands.
Arachnida Ethiopia Hexapoda microorganisms paleoecology
Footnotes
1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail:alexander.schmidt@geo.uni-goettingen.de or vincent.perrichot@univ-rennes1.fr.
Author contributions: A.R.S., V.P., and N.V. designed research; A.R.S., V.P., M.S., K.B.A., K.H.B., H.D., S.J., B.M., E.M., P.C.N., A.N., P.N., E.R., G.R., E.E.S., H.S., P.A.S., and N.V. performed research; A.R.S., V.P., M.S., K.B.A., R.B., H.D., B.M., P.C.N., A.N., P.N., E.R., G.R., E.E.S., H.S., P.A.S., and N.V. analyzed data; and A.R.S., V.P., K.B.A., B.M., P.C.N., E.R., E.E.S., K.S., P.A.S., and N.V. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/1000948107/DCSupplemental.
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