While you may not think of ants when you imagine an army, scientists say that the insects were some of the world’s first soldiers, forming their own forces millions of years ago.
🔴 👉 𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄
🔴 👉 𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄
In fact, researchers recently found one of the oldest fossilized specimens of a so-called army ant in a piece of preserved amber from around 35 million years ago, according to a paper published in Biology Letters. More than anything, the specimen suggests that these predatory ants were once much more diverse and widespread than they already are today.
“Army ant workers participate in raiding swarms, hunting other insects and even vertebrates,” says Christine Sosiak, a study author and a student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in a press release. This activity sometimes results in the consumption of over 500,000 other creatures in a single day.
Ancient Ants
A ravenous raiding allowed the Dorylinae, also known as army ants, to spread across several swaths of the planet with striking success. Today, as many as 270 species roam Africa, Asia and Australia, and about 150 species plunder around North and South America. That said, this type of insect, so named thanks to its incessant movements and fierce foraging practices, have avoided Europe throughout their history, or so it has seemed to scientists for years.
Now, the identification of a fossil from the Eocene period has revealed a strange lineage of ancient army ants. This lineage, scientists say, provides the first proof that these predatory insects once raided around Europe, prior to vanishing from the continent sometime in the past 35 million years.
“From everything we know about army ants living today, there’s no hint of such extinct diversity,” says Phillip Barden, a study author and an assistant professor of biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in a press release. “With this fossil now out of obscurity, we’ve gained a rare paleontological porthole into the history of these unique predators.”
Analyzing Ant Soldiers
Taken from the Baltic region sometime in the 1930s and subsequently added to the collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, the specimen in question remained unnoticed for almost a century before researchers identified it as a unique species.
